


Everyone Has Secrets

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, Asexual Character, Biphobia, Depression, Forced Prostitution, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Minor Character Death, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Smoking, Strong Language, Suicide, Underage Drinking, ace!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:52:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 24
Words: 29,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3865915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Lester is a nerdy guy that no one really pays attention to. Dan Howell is an intimidating badass who becomes more of an enigma as you get to know him, although people rarely do. They might not have much in common, but it soon becomes apparent that everyone has secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many typos in this. I promise when the series is finished I'll fix them.  
> EDIT: So the story is finished and I do plan on fixing the LITERAL THOUSANDS OF TYPOS IN THIS, but since i'm busy with school and my other fic (which you should also check out if you's like) it might take a little while.

Phil groaned as he slapped in the general area of his alarm clock. It was a Saturday morning, but his new roommate would be arriving today and the headmaster insisted that he be at the main office by 8:30 so that he could show the new guy around. 

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and rolled out of bed. After taking a quick shower and checking his hair in the mirror for about twenty minutes before deciding it was a list cause, he grabbed his phone and made his way down the maze of hallways to the main office. He walked through the door at exactly 8:30 since being exactly on time was a superpower of his and sat down in one of the surprisingly comfy chairs in the headmaster's office. 

He pulled up Crossy road on his phone and zoned out as he tried to keep the emo goose from getting hit by the various zooming cars. Eventually, the door to the office opened and the headmaster and a woman who appeared to be in her mid forties walked in. A few moments later a brown haired boy with snakebites, a spiked leather jacket, eyeliner, and black skinny jeans walked in after them carrying a pair of suitcases.

"Sorry we took so long," the woman said, "Dan thought it would be funny to hide my car keys in his mattress this morning."

The boy, Dan, smirked at that. Obviously he wasn't very sorry about their tardiness.

"Don't worry about that. Phillip here doesn't mind," the headmaster replied, "he's never busy on the weekends anyways."

Phil had to hold back from rolling his eyes. He didn't need to be reminded of his lack of a social life.

"Well Daniel-"

"It's Dan," the brown haired boy said, interrupting the older man.

"My apologies. Dan, Phillip here will take you to your room and then show you around our campus."

The woman, who Phil assumed was Dan's mother, gave her son a hug. Dan didn't seem to enjoy the gesture very much, and the boys left the office and started down the hallway.

"It's Phil by the way," Phil said, breaking the silence between them as thesemi-trudged down the halls with Dan's two suitcases. "He only calls me Phillip because he knows I hate it."

Dan raised an eyebrow. "The geezer likes messing with the students?"

"Not really," Phil said, "it's just me."

Dan have him a questioning look.

"He's my step dad," Phil clarified.

Dan didn't ask any more questions, which Phil was greatful for, and after a little more walking the two boys finally arrived at their dorm. Phil pointed out which bed was Dan's, and Dan immediately threw his suitcases onto the bare mattress with a bit of a groan at the effort.

"So, do you want the grand tour now or after you finish unpacking?"

"Now's fine," Dan said as he shrugged with an uninterested look on his face.

 _this guy is gonna be fun to be around_ phil thought.

Phil led the other boy around the campus and tried to ignore how uninterested the other boy seemed. After about an hour of pointing out where things like the cafeteria and gym were, Phil finally stopped in the courtyard behind the school's library.

"This is the courtyard where everyone comes to study on the rare days when it's sunny," he pointed to the right," and those are the woods where people sneak off the smoke or get drunk."

Dan looked up, finally interested in something.

"Really?"

Phil nodded.

"In that case, I'll see you in a few hours."

Before Phil could say anything, Dan pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and started walking off towards woods.

"Of course they put him in my room," Phil mumbles as he walks back to his dorm.


	2. chapter 2

Dan had been at school for about a week now, and Phil had noticed a few things about him.

The first thing he noticed was that Dan's lungs had to be solid black from his much he smokes. In the seven days he's been at the school, Phil had seen him throw five empty packs in their trashcan. And there's no telling how many he's left in the woods that he seems to think of as more of a home than their actual dorm room.

The next thing he noticed was that Dan didn't seem to care about actually attending his classes. So far, Phil had only seen the other boy leave their dorm once to go to class, and when he did he completely ignored the lesson and instead opted to pay attention to some really old looking leather book for the entire lesson. Even when the teacher called on him, he just ignored the world around him and kept reading.

He also noticed that, when Dan decided to actually use their dorm, he had his nose in a book. Phil wasn't sure where these books were coming from, or why someone like Dan would have an interest in literature. On Thursday Phil had given in to his curiosity and tried to skim through one of his roomates mysterious black books only to find that it was not written in English.

"It's probably Latin," Phil's friend Chris said when he told him about his strange discovery.

"Why Latin?" Phil asked.

It's probably some kind of satanic spell book. I bet if you go through his stuff you'll find like virgin blood and frog eyes and shit."

"That's insane," Phil said, "he's a slacker and a punk but u doubt he's some sort of Satan worshipper."

He made a mental note not to go through Dan's stuff though. Just in case.

The last thing he noticed was that Dan was always wearing his leather jacket. Like,  _always_ wearing his leather jacket. Phil had yet to see the other boy take it off, and he's even watched him sleep in it every night.

"What are you staring at, creep?"

Phil suddenly realized he had zoned out while staring at his strange and admittedly scary roommate.

"Sorry," the blue eyed boy said, quickly looking away.

Dan smirked, which Phil was beginning to think was his default facial expression, and went back to reading his possibly satanic book.

"Why are you here?" Phil finally blurted out.

Dan shot him an angry questioning look.

"This is my room.

" Not that here," Phil said, "Here at this school. This school is pretty expensive and you aren't even trying at your classes."

His smirk returned. "Money's not really a problem for me. And I've been kicked out of four other schools. Julia figured boarding school would help me." He put air quotes around "help me." 

Phil wasn't exactly surprised that the other boy had been kicked out of school before, but five schools sounds like a lot.

"What did you do?"

Dan brought his book back up to his face. "That's everyone's first question."

He didn't elaborate on that, so Phil went back to playing Crossy road on his phone for the rest of the night.

*****************

The next day Phil decided to have a movie night with his friends Chris and PJ. The trio decided to nerd it up by watching the extended edition of all three lord of the rings movie with commentary. Unsurprisingly, they had done this many times before and could practically quote the whole thing, but the three of them have yet to tire of their nerdy marathons.

"Who wants to get the popcorn?" Chris said, holding up the empty bowl as the DVD ended.

"I'll get it," PJ said, grabbing the bowl and heading off into the kitchen to pop more popcorn.

"So," Chris said, scooting closer to Phil who had swished himself up at the end of the couch, "has your roommate tried to sacrifice you to the dark lord Satan yet?"

Phil groaned and rolled his eyes.

"He's not a Satanist."

"Who's not a Satanist?" Pj asked, plopping down between his two friends.

"Phil's scary roommate. And there's no proof that he isn't."

"Can we not talk about him?"

"Fine," Chris said with a smirk, "let's talk about Jake."

"Ah yes," PJ said, also smirking, "let's talk about Jake."

"How about we don't," Phil offered despite knowing his friends weren't likely to drop the subject.

"Oh come on, Phil. He's super cute and definitely into you. You should go for it."

"I'm not ready for another relationship yet," Phil said, pressing play and starting the next movie.

"Phil," PJ said softly, "it's been two years. You have to move on eventually."

Phil didn't respond and instead stared ahead at the small TV screen in front of him. His friends sighed and turned their attention back to the movie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had two AP tests this week, and I have two more next week, but when I finish those I should be updating more frequently. Thank you for reading!


	3. chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to take a break from studying for my AP French test and wrote this chapter. Enjoy!

**Chris is having a party at his parents' house again tonight. Wanna come? -PJ**

**Maybe next time -Phil**

Phil hated parties, mainly because large groups of people make him really nervous and he's rather uninterested in consuming copious amounts of alcohol, but Chris and PJ always made sure to invite him whenever he planned a party. Phil was glad that they tried to include him in their social activities, but it would take a lot to get him to leave the comfort if his room on a Saturday night.

Dan wasn't anywhere to be seen, which after the three weeks he'd been there wasn't really surprising, and Phil planned on staying on YouTube watching cute kitten videos until three in the morning. He had his laptop set up perfectly on his lap when his phone started ringing.

"Hello?" He said, not bothering to check who it was before answering.

"Phillip," his step dad said, his voice too energetic for Phil's liking, "I'm taking your mom out to dinner at Chez Adaline tonight and I need you to make sure the house is clean for when we get home."

Phil rolled his eyes. They had a maid, so he was just calling to rub Phil's lack of a social life in his face. Like always.

"I actually have plans tonight."

"Sure you do," the older man said with a sarcastic tone, "so if I drop by your room tonight you won't be watching cat videos til two in the morning like always?"

"Actually," Phil said, remembering the invite from earlier, "I'm going to a party tonight."

"Sure you are. You don't have any friends Phillip. Who would invite  _you_ to a party?"

Phil had to try to avoid sounding as irritated as he was. "I do have friends, actually. Chris and PJ invited me."

His step dad scoffed and hung up, not bothering to say goodbye like a decent human being. Phil rolled his eyes again and quickly sent a message to PJ.

**actually, a party sounds good right now. I'm in -Phil**

**Sweet. I'll pick you up in 10 -PJ**

Phil tossed his phone onto his bed and began searching for something to wear that wasn't his current cookie monster pajamas.

**************

The party was loud and filled with hundreds of drunk and horny teenagers. Phil had expected as much, but it didn't make him any more comfortable in the unfamiliar setting. Chris's parents' house was huge, but it felt like every inch of space was filled with people. PJ had been with him when they had arrived, but about an hour ago he ran off to make out with some girl from their history class in a corner somewhere.

Since then, Phil had been wandering around trying to find a quiet place with no people. But of course, every room he stumbled across was either filled with people or locked and emitting noises he would rather not ponder the source of.

By the time he finally found a quiet unlocked door on the third floor, he was approaching a panic attack. He quickly ran into the silent room and slammed the door behind him, though he doubted that any of the people in the hallway would notice the loud sound.

"What the fuck," a voice said from behind him.

Phil suddenly realized that just because the door wasn't wide open or locked and emitting sex noises, that didn't mean it was empty. With his heart pounding, he turned around and was greeted by none other than Dan Howell sitting on the bed.

"Um, I was just, uh..." Phil stuttered.

"Are you okay? You don't look so hot," Dan said, setting a mostly empty beer can on the nightstand.

Phil shook his head. "I don't do well with...large groups of people."

"Here," Dan said, crossing the room and handing an unopened can of beer from a box beside the bed, "it'll calm you down."

"I don't drink," Phil said, trying to control his breathing better.

"You look like you're gonna have a panic attack. Come on, one won't hurt you."

Phil took a deep breath and then took the blue can from his roommate. He noticed his hands were shaking a bit as he opened it, and when he finally took a tentative sip, he nearly spit it out.

"That's disgusting," he said when he finally swallowed it.

"It's not supposed to taste good, but you'll get used to it."

Phil took a breath and quickly chugged the rest of the can, sitting down on the bed. Dan gave a small laugh at the sight and sat down next to him, setting the box of beer between the two of them.

"If you need some more, feel free," he said, taking his opened can from earlier and finishing it off before tossing it to the floor and picking up a book that Phil hadn't noticed earlier.

The room was quiet after that, and as Phil started feeling the alcohol work its way through his system, he decided to have another beer. And then another. And then another after than. After about half an hour the room started spinning, but he was definitely feeling much more calm than earlier.

"Why are you here?" Phil asked, turning to look at the brown haired boy next to him.

"It was too loud to read everywhere else," Dan answered nonchalantly.

"Not that. Like, why are you at a party if you're just reading?"

The other boy sat his book on his lap and pointed to the box in between them. "Free alcohol. The real question is why are you here, since it's pretty obvious that you hate people and drinking and all the other shit that makes a party a party?"

Phil flopped backwards so he was laying on his back. "My dumbass step dad was my lack of socializing again, so I figured why not."

"He makes fun of you a lot," Dan noted, bringing his book back up to His face, "any particular reason he hates you?"

"He thinks I'm gay," Phil said bluntly.

Dan put his book back down and looked at the other boy who was staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Thinks?"

"Yeah," Phil said, continuing to stare at the ceiling, "technically I'm a panromantic asexual, but in his brain having a boyfriend makes me completely gay. And he gates me for it. He was worse when I was dating Justin, but after the incident he backed off a bit."

Dan stared at the blue eyed boy. Phil didn't seem like the kind of person to share these things so casually with a gut he'd barely spoken to. He decided it must be the alcohol making him open up like this.

"What incident?" Dan asked, sometimes too curious for his own good.

"He killed himself two years ago."

"I'm sorry," Dan said, unsure of the proper way to respond to that statement. He was never good at comfort.

"It was my fault," Phil added in a voice that was quite than earlier but still above a whisper.

"It's not your fault-"

"It is," Phil said, cutting the other boy off,"he put it in the note. He always wanted to do things that I didn't like, and I tried really hard to just deal with it, but I couldn't. I let him put his tounge in my mouth and I let him put his hands on my chest and stomach and I hated it but I dealt with it because I loved him. But every time he put his hands too low I freaked out. He said it was fine, but it wasn't. He always hated himself, and in his note he said he couldn't do it anymore because the person he lived the most in the world was too disgusted with him to touch him."

He was crying now, and Dan wasn't sure what to do to help.

"That wasn't your fault," he finally said.

"It was. I should have just let him have what he wanted, but I couldn't."

The black haired boy brought his arms up and wiped at his eyes while the other boy just stared at him.

"I've never told anyone about it, you know. I hate myself so much for that. I could have saved I'm if I'd just-" 

He stopped wiping his eyes and went back to staring at the ceiling again.

"I don't want to be like this. I wish I was completely gay. I wish I wanted him in the same way that he wanted me."

Dan quickly swiped away a tear that he felt at the corner of his eye, threatening to escape.

"Me too," he whispered quietly to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone cares, my tumblr is sexierthanthetardis. Feel free to check me out if you're bored. (My blog is kinda a mess) 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	4. chapter 4

When Phil woke up the next morning he was greeted by extremely bright lights and a pounding headache. He groaned loudly and pulled his blanket up over his head.

"Morning sleeping beauty," PJ called from the other side of the room, "how's you first hangover treating you?"

Phil made an unhappy grumbling sound from beneath the blanket. "I'm never drinking again in my entire life."

PJ laughed and brought a glass of water over to him. "This'll help."

Phil thanked his friend and quickly gulped down the glass of water. When he set the glass down on the nightstand, a thought suddenly hit him.

"Why am I in your room?"

"Do you remember last night?"

Phil shook his head. "I remember going to Chris's parents' house and then you went off with some girl and everything after that is just really hazy."

"Well," PJ said, plopping down next to his black haired friend in the bed, "I was hanging out with Jacklynn for a while, but then your scary roommate found me and said I needed to take you home. You were crying on one of the guest beds upstairs. I guess you get really emotional when you're drunk 'cause you kept crying until you fell asleep. I tried to take you back to your room but you wouldn't let me, so I just had you stay in my dorm for the night."

"Crying?" Phil asked, and then like a freight train the memory of what he had said last night came flooding back to him.

"Oh god," he said, putting his head in his hands.

"What?" PJ asked slightly worried.

"Can I just move in with you?"

"That might be a little difficult with Joey living here, but I could figure something out. Why?"

"I think I told Dan about Justin," the blue eyed boy whispered.

PJ was silent for a moment. "What about Justin?"

"Everything," Phil said, "about me and him and the incident and the note."

"You never talk to anyone about Justin. You won't even really talk to me and Chris about it. Why'd you tell Dan?"

"I don't know," he said, feeling tears form behind his eyes, "I was drunk and I just couldn't stop my mouth. God, peej, how am I going to be able to go back to my room now? He knows everything!"

"Calm down," PJ said, "I'm sure it's fine. You've said he's almost never in your room anyways. You can stay here for a few days and by the time you go back he'll be too distracted by his weird Satan books and the other weird shit he dies to care about what you said."

"Thanks PJ," Phil said. Sometimes his friends were too nice to him.

"No problem," PJ said, patting the other boy on the shoulder, "and by the way, if you ever want to talk about what happened with Justin, I'm always here for you."

"Thanks PJ, but I'm still not ready to talk about him yet. Or at least not while I'm sober apparently."

"Okay," PJ said, standing up so he could go cook breakfast, "just remember that it wasn't your fault what happened."

"I know," he lied.

*******************************

After he managed to get Phil to his friend, Dan decided he should probably leave. His talk with his roommate left him feeling like shit, which being completely honest was how he felt the majority of the time, and he wanted privacy for what he was about to do.

When he got back to his dorm all the lights were out, and he decided he should give the other boy some privacy when he eventually returned. He put the book that he had brought to the party down on his bed and made sure what he needed was in his wallet before trekking off into the woods behind the school.

Contrary to what Phil had told him, Dan almost never saw anyone else in the woods, and on the rare occasions that he did they were just barely back so that they wouldn't be seen by any passing teachers. About a ten minute walk from the edge of the woods was a small outcropping of rocks next to a tiny river that Dan liked to think of as his own special spot. 

Like a home. Only he doesn't have a home anymore. And he never will again.

He sat down on the damp earth beneath him and pulled the small blade he carried with him out of his wallet. The thin metal was cold against his fingers. 

He wished more than anything that he could stop doing this to himself, or at least try to stop doing this to himself, but he was too far gone for that and he knew it. He placed the small blade on the ground beside him while he shrugged off his leather jacket.

The chilly night breeze hit his bare arms and he shivered. The feeling of having his arms revealed for the world around him had become an alien sensation lately, but it never lasted long. He looked down at his right arm that was covered in slightly more scars than his left arm. He hated the asymmetry of it, but being left handed made it harder to slice through his left arm the same way he did his right.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, not to himself but not to anyone else either, and dug the tiny strip of metal into his arm.

Despite what he had been led to believe, the pain if it got worse as time passed. Every new cut hurt worse than those from days previous, but it was what he wanted. He wanted it to hurt worse and worse until it hurt so much that he can't do it anymore. He wants it to hurt so much that he'll never do it again.

But it was never enough, so he let himself relish in his own self destruction instead. He let each new mark bring a sick and twisted sort of comfort to him until he was too drained to continue and just let the blade fall to the ground beside him.

He looked at the new marks dripping deep red onto the ground beneath him and he gave a sad laugh.

"You'd love to see me like this, wouldn't you Bryce?"

He sat there until he finally fell asleep, and in the back of his mind he hoped he would never wake up. But he always did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I've finally finished all of my exams, so I should be uploading more frequently.


	5. chapter 5

Phil ended up spending three days in PJ's dorm before he decided it was probably safe to return to his own room. His friend insisted that he could stay for as long as he wanted, but Phil knew the PJ was probably tired of sleeping on the couch, and Phil had had one too many awkward encounters with PJ's roommate Joey already.

"If things get too awkward you can always come back to my room. And Chris would probably take you in too," PJ said as the pair stood outside of Phil's door.

"I can't keep avoiding him forever, but thanks for the offer peej."

PJ gave his friend a hug before walking down the hall to head back to his own dorm. Phil took in a deep breath and opened the door, bracing for the awkwardness that was inevitably to come.

When he walked in, Dan was reading a book on the couch and licking at his snakebites absentmindedly. He glanced up momentarily when the other boy walked past, but returned to his book almost immediately. Phil thanked whatever gods were out there that his roommate was so distant from everyone as he hastily made his way to his room.

"That wasn't too bad," he said to himself as he pulled out his laptop and began scrolling through tumblr like he usually did after school during the week.

After a couple hours of mindlessly scrolling through posts of puppies and large dogs sitting in tiny laps, Dan walked into the bedroom and flopped onto his own mattress and began staring up at the ceiling. Phil left him be, but after twenty minutes of silence that was gradually becoming more and more awkward, Phil decided that he should probably say something to the other boy.

"Hey."

Dan lifted Hus hand and gave a small wave as he continued to stare up at the plain white ceiling above them.

"What are you doing?" Phil asked, hoping to elicit more of a response from the other boy.

"Staring at the ceiling."

 _Well no duh_ Phil thought.

"Why are you staring at the ceiling?" Phil offered.

The other boy sighed. "I ran out of things to read, and it's storming pretty bad outside, so I've got nothing better to do."

"Why don't you, like, do homework or something?" Phil suggested.

"Ha," Dan said sarcastically, "you're funny."

The brown haired boy continued to stare blankly at the ceiling, and Phil did his best to ignore how awkward it was. After a few more minutes passed, a loud clap of thunder sounded, and the lights in the room blinked a few times before going back to normal.

Then Dan started humming. It was a creepy melodic tune that Phil had never heard before, and hearing it come from his kind of scary roommate who was staring off into space with a blank expression made it that much creepier. Phil was about to make an excuse to leave and let the other boy continue being creepy by himself when he heard their front door opening.

"Daniel James Howell!" A woman's voice yelled.

Phil looked over, but Dan seemed completely unfazed.

"Daniel," the woman who was with Dan on his first day said as she let herself into their room, "what the hell are you doing?"

"Staring at ceiling."

The woman looked like she was about to start spewing smoke out of her ears, but she took a breath and collected herself before continuing.

"The school called; you're failing all of your classes. You have a twelve in your chemistry class. A twelve, Dan! Are you even going to your classes?"

Dan shrugged, and Phil watched awkwardly from across the room as the woman continued to stare daggars at Dan who seemed totally seemed totally uninterested in what was happening.

"I've tried scheduling meetings to discuss your grades," she continued, "but you haven't shown up to any of them! I had to sneak into your school and find your dorm just to talk to you."

"Yet when I break into school it's bad," Dan said sarcastically.

"You know this isn't the same thing. Seriously Dan, are you not trying  _at all_ here?"

This time, Dan sat up and looked at her. "No, Julia, I'm not. I told you I wasn't going to when I sent you here. And why do you care anyways? You're not my fucking mom Jules, in case you forgot."

The woman, Julia, looked pretty hurt by that. She finally turned to look at Phil, who was awkwardly doing his best to pretend that he wasn't listening to the argument going on five feet away from him.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, but would you mind letting me talk to Dan alone for a few minutes?"

"Of course," Phil said, grabbing his laptop and heading off to their living room, making sure he closed the door before plopping himself down on their sofa.

Phil heard yelling coming out of their bedroom, but he couldn't make out what was being said. He decided that easedropping probably wasn't the best thing to do right now, so he put in some headphones and started blasting muse into his ears to drown out the sounds of his roommate yelling at his roommate's not-mom.

After about half an hour, Phil saw Julia open their bedroom door and walk out of their dorm with a defeated look on her face. Phil paused his music and took out his headphones before walking over to his room. He stopped outside the door, unsure if he should go in or not. After five minutes of going back and forth in his head, he decided to just do it and pushed the door open before walking in.

When he walked in, he saw Dan laying on his back and staring at the ceiling again. Only now his eyes were filled with tears that were leaking out and streaming down his cheeks. Phil opened his mouth to sasomething, but the other boy cut him off.

"I swear, if you try to comfort me or some shit I'll break your fucking face."

Phil looked at the other boy for a moment. "Do you want me to stay with a friend for the night or something?"

Dan sat up, and Phil was scared for a moment that the brown eyed boy was going to hit him, but he didn't.

"No. This is more your room than it is mine. I'm gonna go."

With that, he stood up and left. Phil played down on his bed and wondered exactly where it was that Dan planned on going to. The storm was still raging outside, and as far as he knew Dan didn't have any friends. Phil briefly considered asking him to come back, but he decided against it. Dan probably wanted to be alone for a while, and Phil could understand that.

"I hope you're okay," he said aloud before changing into pajamas and going to bed.

A few miles down the road, Julia wished the same thing.

And sitting under a set of rocks in the pitch dark woods during a raging thunderstorm, Dan knew he wasn't okay. And he never would be.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I tried to upload this chapter twice before on my phone, but the website would glitch and delete it. then my wifi got turned off for a week. basically, the universe has been against me posting this chapter. hopefully it will actually work this time.

When Phil woke up the next morning, Dan still wasn’t in their room. He considered going out to look for him, but it was a school day, so Dan was probably still sleeping wherever he was. Sighing, Phil hopped out of bed and quickly got ready for school.  
Class went by as usual with everyone nearly falling asleep as teachers drone on and on endlessly about topics that no one actually cares about. Everything was almost painfully normal until lunch finally rolled around, and from across the cafeteria Phil saw Dan sitting by himself at a table in the corner. Dan rarely went to his classes, but on the few occasions that he did, he was never around for lunch.  
Phil wondered if he should go sit with him since he too was sitting by himself. Dan came off as scary and unapproachable, but after the argument he had with Julia the night before, he was probably feeling pretty shitty. Picking up his mostly empty tray, Phil made his way across the lunchroom and plopped himself down next to the other boy.  
“What the fuck are you doing?” Dan asked as Phil sat down across from him.  
“Eating lunch,”” Phil said, dramatically chomping on a dry and rather tasteless cafeteria carrot for emphasis.  
“Why are you sitting here?” Dan clarified, beginning to sound agitated.  
“The seat was open and people stare at me when I sit alone.”  
It was true. Pj and Chris usually went off campus for lunch despite the school’s clear rules against it, so Phil usually ended up eating by himself. Teenagers were known to stare at people who stuck out, and having no friends to sit with at lunch makes you stick out a good bit anyways, but when Phil went from being the kid who sat alone at lunch to the kid who’s boyfriend killed himself, the stares had gotten a lot worse.  
“Fuck ‘em,” Dan responded simply.  
“Easy for you to say Mr. leather jacket and face piercings, but if I can avoid drawing attention to myself, I'm going to.”  
Dan didn’t argue any further for which Phil was grateful; he knew the other boy needed the company. Phil finished off his lunch in silence and fiddled with his fork for the remainder of the time while he waited for the bell to ring. He noted that Dan’s hair was curly today instead of its usual straight, and his clothes were rumpled like he’d slept in them. He wanted to ask where Dan had went last night, but he knew that the other boy would probably just get angry and ignore his question altogether, so he opted to stay silent.  
When the lunch bell rang, Dan got up and left without a word. Phil sighed even though that’s exactly what he expected his roommate to do as he put away his tray and made his way through the halls to his next class.  
His next class was Chemistry, and he was shocked to see none other than Dan Howell sitting in the back of the class when he walked in. Apparently their teacher was caught off guard by the brown eyed boy’s presence too.  
“Mr. Howell?”  
Dan gave a sarcastic wave from the back of the class.  
“Glad you decided to show up again,” their teacher said, grabbing a stack of papers off of his desk, “Unfortunately we’re having our unit test today, but I can give you some boom work while we take it-“  
“I can take the test,” Dan said, cutting him off.  
The teacher raised an eyebrow at that, but he decided that if the kid who had only shown up to class three times wanted to take a unit test with the rest of the class, he would let him. He quickly passed out the tests and then sat back down at his desk.  
“Hey Teach,” Dan called from the back, “I need a pencil.”  
Their teacher rolled his eyes but threw a pencil to him anyways. Dan caugh it and immediately went to work scribbling on the test in front of him. After a few moments Phil noticed that he was staring at the strange sight and diverted his attention back to his own paper.  
A short twenty minutes later, Dan malked up to the frnt and placed his test on the teacher’s desk.  
“There’s no way youre finished,” the teacher said, picking up the stapled stack of paper, “You didn’t even use a calculator.”  
“Didn’t need one,” Dan said matter of factly.  
Their teacher scoffed, “If you were just gonna doodle on it I could have given you blank paper.”  
Dan shrugged and walked out of the classroom without another word. Phil went back to his own test until five minutes later when the teacher made a strangled noise from his desk.  
“Oh my god. That little punk made a 100.”  
******************************  
When Phil got back to their room that afternoon, Dan was reading a book on his bed again, but this time he quickly shoved it under his pillow when Phil walked into their room. Phil thought this was strange, but he elected to ignore it. Instead, he tossed a large stack of papers onto the other boy’s bed.  
“What the hell is that?”  
“All of the Chemistry tests for the year. Mr. Barron gave them to me. He said that if you turn them all in you can pass the class without having to show up for the rest of the year.”  
Dan eyeballed the papers. “And what exactly makes him think I'm going to do these?”  
“Well you breezed through that test today like it was nothing. You could probably finish these in like an hour if you got bored.”  
Dan huffed and threw the papers onto his nightstand, but Phil noted that he didn’t throw them in the trashcan a few feet away. Maybe he was actually planning to put some effort on after all.  
“I’m going out,” Dan said, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from his nightstand.  
Phil gave him a nod and watched as he walked out the door. When Phil finally heard the front door click shut, he walked over and stood beside his roomate’s bed. He had a quick back and forth with himself before deciding oh screw it and quickly reaching under the pillow and pulling out a thick black book that looked a little different from what he was used to seeing Dan read.  
“La Bible,” Phil read the cover aloud.  
He opened it up and flipped through a few pages to make sure it was what he thought it was before placing the book back underneath the pillow where he found it.  
“I don’t know what’s more surprising,” Phil said to himself, “The fact that you know French, the fact that you’re reading The Bible of all things, or the fact that you think you need to hide it.”  
Phil sat down on his bed and mentally went through a list of things that he knew about Dan. Dan was a chain smoker with lips rings and a leather Jacket that he never takes off, but he was also a guy who read the Bible in French and could ace a chemistry test without ever attending the class. He had a dirty mouth and a tendency to talk back to anyone and everyone, but he was surprisingly kind and considerate when he needed to be. He had been kicked out of school multiple times, but he never did much more than read in his free time.  
“Why can’t you just make sense?” He said to himself as he pulled up his laptop to browse through tumblr for the remainder of the evening.


	7. chapter 7

Phil was scrolling through tumblr like usual on Saturday when he heard his phone ring from its place on the nightstand. he picked it up and had to suppress a groan of discontent when he heard the voice on the other end of the line.

"Phillip!" his stepfather said excitedly, "There's someone in my office who wants to talk with you. Can you be down here in about five minutes?"

"Who needs to see me?" Phil asked, shutting his laptop.

"Great! I'll see you in five," he said before quickly hanging up.

Phil groaned. of course he wasn't going to explain anything. He quickly set his laptop down on his bed and put on a pair of skinny jeans before hastily making his way out of the room. Dan, who was sitting on their couch reading a book, shot his a questioning glance as he shot out the door but didn't say anything to him.

When Phil walked into the office, he saw his stepdad waiting for him with none other than Julia.

"Uh," Phil said, confused, "Was I supposed to bring Dan with me?"

Julia shook her head. "He wouldn't want to see me. I actually wanted to speak with you if that's alright."

"That's totally fine," His Stepdad answered for him.

"MR. Collins," Julia said, turning to address the headmaster, "Would you mind if I talk to Phil here privately?"

"Oh, sure," He said, standing to leave the room, "Just let me know if he causes you any trouble."

Phil rolled his eyes and sat down in one of the plush chairs next to Julia. when the door closed, she turned to Phil and gave him a small smile.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to meet properly last time. I'm Julia Howell; Dan's Aunt."

She held out her hand, and Phil shook it.

"You've probably noticed that my nephew doesn't like me very much," She started, "So I can't really get him to talk to me about anything. I actually sent him to boarding school so that he wouldn't feel like I was always hovering over him, but since he's got here the only conversation I've had with him was that argument the other night."

she paused for a moment, like she was trying to decided what she should say next.

"I can't ask him, and you're the only other person who might know. is he okay?"

"Um..." Phil wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that question.

"I know he's probably still drinking and smoking those nasty cigarettes, but do you know if he's doing anything else? Weed? ecstasy? Cocaine? Things like that?"

Phil thought for a moment and shook his head. If Dan was doing any of that, he was hiding it pretty well..

"Okay," she said, slightly relieved, "I'm guessing you haven't gotten to see his arms lately, have you?"

Phil shook his head again.

"I'll just have to pray about that then," She said to herself, "I noticed that his grades are going up. Is he going to class again?"

"Not really, Phil answered, "He only goes if we have a test that day. But somehow he's acing all his exams."

Julia smiled knowingly at that. "He's smarter than he lets on."

After that, she thanked Phil for meeting with her and told him to go back to whatever he was doing before she interrupted him. he assured her that she wasn't interrupting anything important and strolled back to his room. Dan was gone when he returned, which wasn't that surprising. when it was sunny outside Dan would disappear for a while only to return at ungodly hours of the morning reeking of cigarette smoke.

Phil stripped his pants off, because no one really wears pants if they have no where to go on a Saturday, and flopped back down onto his bed to resume his browsing from earlier. However, he only got to enjoy about half an hour of scrolling before he heard a knock at his bedroom door. Before he had a chance to ask who it was or give a warning that he was laying in his t-shirt and boxers, Chris and PJ walked in and sat next to him on his bed.

"You could have told me you were coming over," Phil said, closing his laptop again, "I would have put some pants on."

"It's nothing we haven't seen before, dude," Chris said.

"So why are you guys here?"

His friends' smiles fell. "We have some bad news," PJ said.

"What's wrong?" Phil asked, suddenly very worried.

"Do you know what Wednesday is?" Chris asked.

Phil nodded. there's no way he could forget. Wednesday would be the third anniversary of Justin's suicide. Or in Phil's eyes, the third anniversary of when he killed his boyfriend.

"Well," PJ started, "My sister's baby came early. My mom is flying me over there tomorrow and making me stay the week."

"And my great uncle died," Chris said, "The rich one with the beach house in Miami. My parents are flying me out tonight and knowing my family, I won't be back for atleast a week. maybe more if someone tries to hide his will."

"So what you're saying," Phil said softly, "Is I'm going to be all alone this year."

His voice cracked on the last word, and his friends quickly pulled him into a tight hug.

"It's gonna be okay, Phil," Pj said while rubbing circles on Phil's back to soothe him, "I'll call you every chance I get. I promise. you wont be completely alone."

"Me too," Chris said, "I'll even lock myself in the attic if I have to."

Phil just cried. He always bottled up all his emotions about Justin and refused to let them spill out, but on his anniversary was a different story. It was like an explosion of despair washed over him on that day; practically drowning him. the only way he'd made it through the last two was because Chris and PJ were there to help him through it. and now they wouldn't be.

"I'll be okay," he said when he finally finished crying, "I made it through two years. I can handle this."

He didn't even now how wrong he was.

***********************************

When Phil woke up on Wednesday, a crushing wave of total agony washed over him before he even had a chance to consider getting out of bed. And it only got worse from there.

Luckily Dan wasn't in there room today, so Phil didn't have to worry about him seeing him in his current state. he curled himself into a ball and just sobbed. He cried and cried until his body refused to form any more tears. and then came the worst part. The thinking.

Obviously he had had good memories with Justin. On good days, he remembered all the times that they would cuddle on the couch watching superhero movies. He remembered all the times that Justin would surprise him with pizza on a Thursday night because waiting for the weekend just took too much effort and they both needed a homework break. He remembered sneaking into prom and sharing a few dances before getting caught and having to spend detention together for a week. he remembered sharing their first kiss beside the lake at Justin's parents' house one night when Phil finally worked up the courage to lean in without hyperventilating. There were hundreds of good memories that he could think of that he had shared with Justin.

But curled up on his bed, Phil could only recall the worst memories. He remembers every time he would pull back only to see the hurt look on his face. He remembers every time that he could hear him crying because someone had said something to him in class that he took a little too seriously. he remembers the first time he saw the red marks that littered his arms and he remembers how broken he looked when he though Phil would leave him because of that. He remembers the words that were hastily scrawled on a tiny piece of paper that were meant to be an apology but instead were just tiny daggers stinging his heart and reminding him that it was all his fault that this happened. But most of all he remembers his crumbled body laying on the bathroom floor with two long scars running perpendicular to the hundreds of others that were already on his arms. He remembers all the blood that he couldn't believe had come from just one person. And he remembers how his heart sank when he saw it, and how it nothing was ever the same after that.

The sun rose and fell in the sky as he laid there. Occasionally it would become too  much and he would break down into tears again, but it would all stop eventually. And the memories would come flooding back. And With every new wave he would look over to his nightstand where he knew he kept it. he had promised his friends that he would never do it. He even swore to Justin a few years ago that he would never actually do it. But with every wave coming on more intense than the last, he decided that he would have to ask their forgiveness later. He couldn't handle it anymore.

He sat up for the first time that day and pulled a small pocket knife that his mom had given him when he was in middle school out of the back of the drawer in his nightstand. it was small, but since he had never really been one for really adventurous activities as a child, the blade was still exceptionally sharp. He ran his thumb over it a few times to feel just how sharp it was. He had hidden the knife in the beginning of ninth grade in case he ever needed it, and despite the little voice in the back of his head that knew this would be a bad idea, he knew that he finally needed it.

He placed the small blade against his pale white wrist and looked at it. All of the warning he had heard Justin tell him a million times echoed through his head. He told him that once he did it once, it would be like heroin. He had told him a thousand times that he wished he had never started, because he never learned how to stop. But Justin wasn't here anymore, he decided, so there was no one here to tell him not to do it.

He barely pressed down at all when a hard grabbed his wrist.

"Don't," Dan said sternly. Phil hadn't even noticed him come in.

"Let go of my arm," Phil said with a surprising lack of emotion.

"I'll let go of your arm when you let go of the knife."

"I'm not doing that." HE didn't care if his roommate was there. It was too much. He needed it.

"Look," Dan said, sitting down next to the other boy, "I know this seems like a good idea right now, but tomorrow you're going to regret it. This comes with a high price and you're not gonna want to pay it."

Phil didn't lessen his grip on the small knife. "I don't care. I just need something."

Dan turned Dan's head so that he could look him in the eyes. "I can help you feel better. Just let go of the knife."

Phil took a second to consider that. He didn't doubt that Dan probably had plenty of drugs that would make his so high that he wouldn't even remember why he was so upset, but he wasn't to sure about doing drugs. He was never that kind of kid.

 _Of course, it's probably not much worse than what I'm doing now_ he thought.

A little reluctantly, Phil let go of the small pocket knife and Dan carefully set it down on the nightstand. Phil took a moment to wonder what it was exactly that Dan was going to give him when the other boy suddenly wrapped him up in a really tight hug. Phil was confused, but after a few seconds of awkwardly sitting there he decided it was probably best to hug back.

"I know this would be better if i was one of your lame friends instead of the creepy troublemaker you live with, but sometimes you just need a hug."

Phil started crying again, and Dan just held onto him; occasionally rubbing circles on Phil's back. After what was probably a long time, his tears finally stopped and the exhaustion from the day caught up to him. He felt like he could sleep for a year.

"Thank you," he said, pulling away so he could go to bed.

"Anytime." Dan said.

Phil went to bed, and Dan left like he normally would on a school night. But in the back of his tired brain, Phil felt like something was different now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to whoever is still reading this. I know it kinda sucks, so I appreciate it.


	8. Chapter 8

Phil knew that he wasn't exactly the brightest kid ever to grace the planet, but this time he was  _really_   stupid. 

It was during Trigonometry on Thursday when he finally made the connections. He was trying to figure out how the hell he was supposed to graph the problem in front of him when the realization hit him like a freight train. This was why Dan what to do with the hugging yesterday. And why he always wore that leather jacket of his. And why his Aunt had asked about his arms.

Phil wasn't sure what he should do with the information when it hit him. But he knew one thing for sure; he sure as hell wasn't going to do nothing. He also wasn't going to sit by trying to figure out how the hell trig works when half of the problems look more like some foreign language than they do math when he could be figuring out how to help the surprisingly kind yet admittedly terrifying bot that he lived with.

"Mrs. Smith," Phil said, raising his hand, "May i go to the nurse's office?"

Mrs. Smith nodded from her desk, too focused on her computer screen to even look up long enough to see who it was that asked the question. Phil took advantage of this and shot out of his desk and down the hallways as quickly as he could. When he arrived at their shared dorm room however, he paused. He had no idea what he should day to his roommate. He knew he had to say  _something_ to him, but what exactly that something was, he wasn't sure.

He could always call PJ or Chris and ask them what he should do, but when he had called them earlier that morning to tell them that he was fine after ignoring all of their messages yesterday, they sounded really busy with all of their family stuff. They would definitely try to sneak away for a couple of minutes to talk to him if he did call, but he didn't want to get either of them in more trouble than they likely already were from sneaking away to call and text him so much yesterday.

After a few minutes he decided that if nothing else, he would let him know he was here for him if he needed someone to talk to or if he ever needed a hug. And if, like usual, he wasn't actually in their dorm, he would google the kind of things to say to someone in this situation.Without any more hesitation, he opened the door and walked into their dorm.

********************

Dan was used to having bad days. If he was being completely honest, he couldn't actually remember the last time he had had a good day. Every day for the past few years had just been bad days with different levels of intensity, and today was a very intense bad day.

He didn't know what had caused this particular day to be so bad, but he didn't really care either. All he knew was that it was becoming way too much again. It was too much of everything and not nearly enough of everything else. It felt like he was drowning at the bottom of the deepest ocean and he couldn't tell if the pressure or the lack of air would end him first. 

This wasn't the first time that simply being alive hurt more than anything he could think of. He still remembered the first time like it was yesterday. He was only fifteen years old back then, and when he tried to end everything he was too ignorant on how to do it properly. His mom had found him in his bathroom immediately after he'd swallowed not nearly enough pills to do the job and rushed him to the hospital.

The second time he did it was nearly a year ago after he had just turned seventeen. This time he had swallowed more than enough pills to do the job, and he'd jumped in front of a speeding transfer truck for good measure. When he woke up, the doctors kept telling him how much of a miracle it was that he had survived something like that. Julia said that God must have had something big planned for him. Dan didn't think it was a miracle. He thought it was God's way of fucking with him, or maybe it was his punishment for turning into what he is now. Either way, it was the farthest thing from a miracle in his book.

This time was going to be different though. Everyone would be in their classes for at least a few more hours. This time, there would be no one to stop him or rush him off to some hospital. He would finally be able to rest. Maybe if he was lucky enough he'd even get to see his mom again.

He had his iPod sitting on the bathroom counter softly playing through his favorites playlist; Maitre Gims's voice filling the room. He'd stripped down to his boxers and sat with his back against the tiny door of the shower. His clothes were pretty nice in his opinion, and Julia being the charitable person she is would probably want to donate them after he was gone. It'd be a waste to stain them now.

He held the knife that he took from Phil yesterday in his hands. This was the only part that he really felt bad about. The poor kid was such a wreck after his boyfriend killed himself, and now Dan was going to put him through the same thing all over again. He knew that Phil would be the one to find him here tonight, but he just hoped that the fact that they weren't actually close, or even friends for that matter, would cushion the blow a little bit.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He put he placed the tip of the blade on the end of his wrist where it connected to his hand and in one swift motion tore it all the way up his arm to the back side of his elbow. The pain exploded immediately and he could barely hold the knife long enough to do the same thing to his left arm. Blood started flowing out incredibly fast and he just smiled at the deep red liquid as it spilled out of his body and onto the dirty tile floor below him. Everything was going to work this time. It was finally all going to be over.

He started to feel really dizzy, so he closed his eyes and allowed himself to slowly drift off into a permanent state of unconsciousness. Just as he was about to slip away completely, he heard the bathroom door creak open followed by a horrified scream.

"NO!" Phil yelled from the doorway.

 _please don't_ Dan managed to think before slipping completely into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the last chapter ended up being a longer one, so i think i can get away with this one being a little bit shorter than usual. The next Chapter should be normal length. Or maybe not. I don't really know what i'm doing. But that was probably obvious.
> 
> also, i wasn't sure what kind of music Dan should be listening to here. So, like every great writer, i just had him listen to the song i was listening to at that point. I know. I'm lazy.


	9. Chapter 9

Phil spent four hours sitting in the waiting room in the hospital before Julia came out to speak to him. He had been told by multiple doctors that they couldn't tell him about Dan's condition if he wasn't a family member. Despite this, Phil continued to sit in the waiting room and continuously ask anyone for information until someone tells him something about the other boy.

"He's stable," She said as soon as she spotted the blue eyed teenager sitting by himself in the monochrome hospital chairs.

Phil gave a sigh of relief upon hearing this. There was so much blood when he found him sitting there in the bathroom floor; it was far too similar to when he had found his boyfriend in the same way three years ago.

"I didn't know there was something wrong with him, "Phil admitted, sounding ashamed, "I'm sorry I didn't stop him from doing this."

"Oh, Honey," Julia said, pulling him out of his chair and into what could only be described as a motherly hug, "This isn't your fault. Dan's just sick, and he has been for a long time now. He refuses to let anyone close enough to help him in the way that he needs. Don't blame yourself for this."

She let him go and proceeded to sit down beside him in the admittedly uncomfortable hospital chairs.

"You know," she said after a moment of silence, "if you wouldn't have gotten there when you did, this could have been a lot worse. Why weren't you in class, if you don't mind my asking?"

Phil just shrugged awkwardly. he didn't know how to explain his sudden revelation about his roomate's self harm problem, and even if he did he wasn't feeling up for explaining himself to her. Julia didn't seem bothered by his response though.

"Well, thank you."

They sat there quietly for a few more minutes before Phil broke the silence.

"What happened to him? To make him like this?"

"That's unfortunately a very long story, and a story that he wouldn't want me sharing," She said as a doctor motion for her to follow him and she stood up, "But you shouldn't worry to much about that. You should go home and get some sleep. It's going to be hours before they can move him to a facility, and they aren't going to let you see him since you aren't family. Don't stress yourself more than you have already."

Phil nodded, but decided to stay decided to stay at the hospital for a few more hours anyways. He wasn't ready to go back to their dorm yet; not until he was absolutely positive that someone had finished mopping up all of the blood that had been covering their bathroom floor. He wished PJ or Chris were here so he could just stay with one of them for the night, but since they were both still away he decided to wait until after nightfall to go back to his room. Just to be safe.

*****************************************************

It was three weeks before Dan finally returned to school. In that time, word of what had happened managed to make its way around the whole school. And with the news, as is typical with teenagers, rumors had made their way around as well.

With the exception of Chris and PJ, everyone left a wide berth around Phil wherever he went. Also, Everyone was always whispering about him. They tried to keep their words under hushed tones, but he knew what they were talking about. First it was Justin, and now it was Dan; two people who were extremely close to him, or in Dan's case just appeared close due to living arrangements, and now both of them had tried to kill themselves. Everyone saw that Phil was the connection, and they wanted nothing to do with him lest something horrible happen to them.

Phil had expected something like this, and he was accustomed to typically only socializing with two people; but everyone avoiding him like he had the plague had hurt more than he had anticipated. The worst part was, however, that he agreed with their logic. He knew that the first time was his fault, and even though he didn't really socialize with the brown eyed boy very much, he knew this one was his fault too.

On Dan's first day back, Phil was sitting alone at lunch as usual, only this time the tables surrounding his were also empty, when Dan Plopped himself down in the seat across from the Black haired boy. Phil raised an eyebrow at him.

"You're at lunch."

"It would appear so," Dan said mildly sarcastically.

Phil had expected Dan to act differently when he returned, but excluding the fact that he was sat in the lunchroom voluntarily conversing with others, nothing seemed different about him at all. Phil continued to much slowly on his food while Dan sat there and observed the rest of the lunch room around them.

"Everyone's avoiding you."

"Yeah, i noticed," Phil said more bitterly than intended.

"Sorry about that," Dan said with more earnest that Phil had expected.

"Don't be sorry," Phil said, "It's not your fault."

"Isn't it though? I've heard the rumors too you know."

"That doesn't make it your fault," He said, pushing his empty tray away from himself, "It's the fault of the people who are spreading things that are none of their business when they don't even know anything."

 _And besides_ Phil thought  _They're probably right. Maybe i am dangerous to be around._

Dan looked like he wanted to argue with him, but decided against it. As lunch dragged on, Phil could feel the entire Cafeteria's eyes turning to stare at him. They weren't even being subtle about it, and Phil felt a growing need to run out of the Cafeteria and avoid everyone's curious but judgmental gazes that were focused on him. Apparently, Dan wasn't a fan of the new found attention either, so he turned around to glare at the room behind him. Everyone immediately turned around and made a show of looking anywhere but the boy's table in the back corner. Dan scoffed.

"The general Public is a spineless lot," he said as he turned back around, "They jump at any chance to scrutinize people that they know nothing about, but when they're engaged by said people they back off long enough to slink into the background so that they can continue with their ignorant judging without being called out. It's pathetic."

Phil didn't know how to respond to that. Dan wasn't much of a talker, and when he was his vocabulary seemed to consist of atleast 50% swear words, so hearing such a well thought out and articulate statement coming from his roomate was a bit of a shock. Dan, it seemed, wasn't expecting a reply to his statement, and the pair sat in a mostly comfortable silence until the bell rang for class changes.


	10. chapter 10

Dan sat in the woods and lit his third consecutive cigarette. Someone had cleaned all the blades out of his room and the one he kept hidden in his wallet had not so mysteriously disappeared while he was at the psychiatric ward. He had made a mental note to go but some more from one of the shops down the street from the school campus, but he hadn't gotten around to it yet.

He had taken his jacket off out of habit, and despite the chilly night air he chose to leave it off. All of the marks stood out against his pale while arms, but the lack of any fresh cuts irritated him more and more with each passing day. He knew it was sick, but he hated watching his body heal. He didn't deserve to heal.

Without his usual dosage of pain to keep him grounded, his mind started racing with more thoughts that he could process at once. It was like his brain was trying to think of every thought on the planet at the same time and he felt like he was drowning in it. He flicked the cigarette butt into the river in front of him and wished that he could just sin to the bottom of the river and never come up again, but he was starting to think that if his last two attempts didn't work then maybe nothing could actually kill him.

He sighed loudly, "Why do you insist on keeping me here?" he said to the night sky above him.

The woods were silent, save for the rustling of a few nighttime creatures crawling around in the brush.

"Is this your way of punishing me?" He asked as he glared up at the stars, "Have I not been punishing myself enough for you?"

The silence continued, and he felt tears starting to sting at the back of his eyes.

"I know that I've done a lot of bad things, but you can't just keep forcing me to stay here like this. The longer you make me stay here, the more I keep hurting everyone else. Julia had to start popping Xanax from having to deal with all of my shit. And she keeps telling me that her break up with Tom was a long time coming and that it had nothing to do with me, but I know she's lying. Her husband left her because of me. Every time she looks at me she has this sad face that she tries to hide, but I'm not an idiot. I know I look just like my mom, and she pretends it doesn't hurt her but I know it does."

The tears started falling then.

"Plus she thinks that I have all this potential, but I don't. Maybe I used to, but after Bryce that all flew out the window. Her hopes are so high and I just keep crushing them with every breath that I take on this stupid Earth.

"And now there's that Phil kid too. He's too kind for his own good, and I'm just going to end up breaking him. Because of me, all the other kids avoid him like he's go the fucking plague or something, and I want to help him in some way or be his friend or something so he isn't so alone but I can't. As much as I want to deny it, I can't stop thinking about his bright blue eyes and his perfect black hair and his freaking ass that looks like it was sculpted by the heavens. I swear, whenever he's I the same room as me, I can practically feel the happy sunshine radiating off of him."

A little ways downstream something splashed across the water and he turned to try to gaze at it through the darkness.

"Why did you make me like this?" he asked, whispering now, "Why did you let them break me just so I could move on a break someone like Phil? I don't want to keep hurting everyone I come into contact with anymore. I'm begging you this time. Please, just let me die now. I don't care if I go to heaven; actually I'm pretty sure Hell is what's waiting for me at this point. Just please, let me die this time."

Above him, an owl started hooing and flew off, shaking the branch it was on and sending the residual raindrops from the previous storm down onto Dan's head.

"I know you're supposed to work in mysterious ways or some shit, but it wouldn't kill you to give a straight answer every now and then."

***********************************

"Are you okay? How are you feeling?" PJ asked when he noticed that Phil wasn't participating in their nerdy debate about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"I'm fine," Phil said, sounding distracted.

"Wow. That was convincing," Chris said sarcastically, "What's on your mind?"

Phil sighed loudly, "What are the odds of you dropping the subject if I don't answer."

"None," Chris and PJ said in unison.

"Great," Phil said, rolling his eyes, " You're gonna think I'm weird when I tell you."

"We already think you're weird, dude," Chris said, propping his feet up on his coffee table, "That's the whole reason that we're friends with you. Now talk."

Phil rolled his eyes. "Well you remember how I had a crush on Jake and then I just kinda got over it?"

"Do you like Jake again or something?" PJ asked.

"No," Phil said, tugging at a loose string on his shirt, "It's someone else now."

"Well who is it then?" Chris prompted when Phil didn't elaborate.

Phil blushed. "I don't want to say it. It's embarrassing."

"Oh come on, it can't be that bad," Chris said, "Is it the guy in Chemistry who always draws tentacle porn in his notebooks?"

"What? No!"

"Is it the girl who's been wearing the same pair of hello kitty skinny jeans since eighth grade?" PJ asked

"No."

"Is it the guy in trigonometry who slams his head into the desk every time he sneezes?" Chris asked.

"No, and stop guessing. You aren't going to guess who he is."

"So just tell us who he is," Chris offered.

"Noooooo," Phil groaned as he flopped his face down onto one of the pillows on Chris's couch.

"Come on," Pj said, rubbing his shoulder, "We promise not to tease you about it if you tell us who it is."

"It's Dan," he said, still blushing into the pillow.

"Dan as in your roommate Dan?" Pj asked.

"Yeah."

"Why do you like Dan?" Chris asked.

_Because he's really friendly and really smart and kinda mysterious and intriguing. Because he's beautiful and he doesn't care what everyone else thinks about him. Because it's horribly cliché but the whole bad boy thing is way more appealing than it should be. And because I know there's more to him than he let's on and I want to know everything about him._

"I don't know," Phil said instead, "Can we just drop it? I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay," PJ said, "But just be careful about him, Phil."

"Don't worry about it. HE's probably straight. And besides, I'm not ready for another relationship yet anyways."

_And I never will be._

PJ and Chris gave him a sad look, but let the subject drop and continued on with their Buffy debate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, my family has been dealing with a lot of issues lately and it's making my depression pretty bad. I'm going to post as often as I can but it might not be as frequently as before. Thanks to everyone who's still reading this by the way.


	11. Chapter 11

Phil's absolute favorite time of year has always been Christmas. When he was a toddler he was always completely mystified by all of the lights and decorations everywhere. It was like the whole world changed to look like some magical place from inside one of his storybooks. And then there were the presents. Back then his Mom and Dad were still happily married, loving parents who would always buy him the most amazing toys he had ever seen for Christmas.

As he got older, his parents stopped being as happy and loving, and his gifts went from being amazing toys to simple and plain things like socks and even toothpaste, but that still didn't change to joy he felt from looking at all the beautiful lights that decorated all the houses and shops, and the garland that was carefully wound around everything he passed.

Now, as a teenager, Phil's love of Christmas has practically doubled upon his discovery of his new favorite part of Christmas; giving gifts to people. The sheer delight he feels from coming up with the perfect gift from someone resembles that of a young child set loose in a candy store. He absolutely loves giving Christmas presents to people.

Because he loves it so much, he makes a list. Granted, it's less of a list and more of a notebook. He writes down every idea he has for a person along with important things he knows about them and he comments, highlights, and writes over everything until he has the perfect idea of what to get them. He even has color coded tabs for each person so that nothing gets mixed up.

He starts writing in it on the first of November every year, (he would start as early as March, but Chris and PJ manage to control him slightly) and he practically never set the thing down util the holidays are over. And living with the Christmas enthusiast, Dan takes notice of the list his roommate never seems to put down.

"What have you been scribbling about since Halloween?" Dan finally asks one day near the end of November.

"It's my Christmas list," Phil says, knowing he's about to sound like more of a loser than he normally does, "It's where i write down what i'm going to get everyone for Christmas."

Dan plops down next to Phil on their sofa and plucks the notebook from his hands.

"How many people are you buying for, a thousand? Jesus Christ. And is this  _color coded_?"

Phil snatched the notebook back.

"Yes it's color coded and no it's not for like a thousand people. It's just Chris, Peej, my mom, my step-dad, and you."

"Me?" Dan asked, sounding puzzled.

"Yeah," Phil said, blushing slightly, "I mean you may have noticed that i don't really talk to many people and i love giving gifts and stuff so i figured i could get you something but i mean if that's weird then i can just not do that."

Dan couldn't help but smile slightly at the other boy's adorable awkward rambling.

"You can get me something i you want dude, just don't get disappointed when i don't get you something. I don't do Christmas and shit."

"Oh, i don't expect you to do anything for me. Chris and Pj are the only ones who get me things anyways, so it's fine."

Feeling that the conversation was over, Phil took his Christmas list with him and went to his room leaving Dan alone on the couch. Dan watched him leave, taking a quick glance at his butt as he did so. Despite the fact that Phil didn't sound bothered by the lack of people giving him gifts at Christmas, Dan was sad that nearly no one took the time to get him something. The boy is a literal ray of sunshine, and he deserves to be showered in gifts from hundreds of people.

Dan pressed his palms to his eyes, "I'm going to do something immensely stupid, aren't I?"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"I'm coming!" PJ called when he heard a knock at his door.

He wasn't really expecting anyone, seeing as how it was the middle of December now and the majority of the school had went home from winter break, but he was even more shocked to find that the person knocking on his door was none other than his friend's scary roommate Dan Howell.

"Dan?" he said, confused, "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to talk to you. Can i come in for a minute?"

'Uh, sure?" he said, stepping aside to let the leather clad teen into his dorm.

The pair awkwardly sat down on PJ's sofa and Dan started nervously playing with a loose thread on his skinny jeans. PJ noted that when he ignored the leather and the piercings and the near constant glare he sported, Dan looked like an awkward kid you'd find hiding in the back of the library because he's too scared to face the mildly intimidating librarian. It was oddly adorable.

"So Dan, what brings you to my humble abode?"

Dan looked down at his boots, blushing slightly, "Phil showed me his nerdy little Christmas binder thing and he said that no one but you and Chris ever get him anything for Christmas. And like, he's such a good kid and he's really nice so i wanted to get something for him but i don't know what he likes and I've never really been into the whole gift giving shit that people do and i don't have a clue what to get him so i was hoping that maybe you could help me or something."

Dan had gotten faster and more mummbly towards the end, obviously embarrassed about the hole thing, and PJ smiled.

"So you want advice on what to get Phil for Christmas?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Well then," PJ said dramatically, "You have come to the right person."

"First off, don't stress too much because Phil will be absolutely tickled that you decided to get him anything at all. You could buy him a pack of gum and he'd be excited. But if you wanna put some effort into it, he loves hand made things. I'm writing him a short story and knitting him some gloves, and Chris is making him a scrapbook. He's really sentimental.

"If you don't want to go that route, he's a massive nerd. He loves Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Pokemon and Anime and things like that. You've seen all the posters he has on his walls, right? Use that for inspiration. But don't sweat about this too much. He's really easy to please so you really cant mess it up."

Dan nodded, "Got it. Thank you PJ."

"Anytime, Dan."

The brown eyed boy left, and PJ couldn't help but smile. He never would have guessed that the guy with the eyeliner and leather jacket would have such a soft spot for sweet people like Phil.

 _Guess you can't judge a book by it's cover._  He though

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I was dealing with a lot of things, but i should be up for posting again now. I don't know how often i'll be updating, but i'm going to aim for at least every two weeks.   
> and thank you to everyone who's been leaving such nice comments. They really encourage me to keep writing this :)
> 
> (Also Phil's obsession with Christmas is completely based on me. Yes, I have a color coded binder of gift ideas. Yes, i know I'm lame)


	12. Chapter 12

Phil hastily hid his shopping bags under his bed when he heard the front door to his dorm opening. He had finally gotten all of Dan's gifts, and now he just needed to wrap them.

"Why do you look suspicious?" Dan asked when he walked into their room.

"No reason," Phil replied, sounding conspicuous.

"Right," Dan said, walking over to his bed and pulling a notebook out from underneath his pillow.

"What's that?" Phil asked.

"None of your business," Dan replied, walking out of their room.

Phil rolled his eyes and grabbed the gifts from underneath his bed, beginning the frustrating task of attempting to wrap everything before his roomate gets back.

**************************

"So what do you have?" PJ said, flopping down next to the scarier teen on the sofa.

After their first chat, PJ and Dan had been meeting semi-regularly to discuss Dan's gift for Phil. At first Dan had alternated between seeming overly awkward and closed off like he didn't even care about what he was doing, but eventually he got more comfortable around the other boy and now he's just his normal amount of rude and sarcastic in his presence.

Dan handed the sketchbook over to PJ.

"Woah," was all he could say as he flipped through the pages.

"I haven't drawn in a while so it probably looks shitty and i was never really good at drawing in the first place either so..." Dan mumbled, biting at his lip rings as Pj looked at his creations.

"Dan, these are amazing. Like this one, it looks just like the photo I let you borrow. Jesus, these are amazing!"

"Thanks," Dan said, blushing. He was never really good at taking compliments, and it had been a while since he had done anything to deserve one too.

"He's going to love this," PJ said, sounding mystified as he looked back at the sketchbook, "He's literally going to cry when you give it to him."

"God, I hope not."

PJ giggled at that. "These are amazing, Dan. Truly amazing."

PJ gave him back the sketchbook, and Dan stood to leave but Pj grabbed his arm. Dan raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

"You know, after Christmas and everything is over, you can still come by here if you want."

"Thanks PJ, but you're not exactly my type." Dan said in the cockily amused voice that he used in class.

"Not like that you twat," Pj said, rolling his eyes but smiling nevertheless, "I meant if you want to be friends. You're a pretty cool guy and you're fun to hand out with."

Dan pulled his arm away and looked at the ground as he turned to leave. "I don't do  _friends._ " He mumbled.

_It's less painful for everyone that way._

"If you change your mind, I'll be here," Pj said as he walked out the door.

***************************************

"Hey Dan," Phil called from the kitchen, "When do you want your gifts?"

"What do you mean?" Dan asked from his place on the couch.

"I've got to go to my mom's house on Christmas so I won't be here. So do you want me to give them to you on the 24th or the 26th?"

"The 24th. Julia is holding me hostage from Christmas until New Year."

Phil nodded, despite the fact that the other boy couldn't see him. He was surprisingly nervous about giving Dan the gifts he had gotten him. He was never nervous about things like this. Gift giving was supposed to be fun, not stressful.

_Just two more days. then you can give it to him and all of this will be over with._

He couldn't have guessed how wrong he would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter was so short and scattered. The next one is going to be longer than usual.


	13. Chapter 13

After months of waiting, Christmas Eve had finally arrived. Phil, Chris, and PJ had all decided to have a small gift exchange part in Chris's dorm that day, and despite Phil's protests Chris had even brought some wine for the three of them to share.

"Chris!" Phil said, opening the last gift of the evening, "This is amazing!"

"It better be," Chris joked, pouring himself some more wine, "I sat through six scrapbooking classes learning how to make that."

Phil pulled his friend into a giant hug, nearly spilling his drink onto the floor. Chris laughed and hugged him back with equal enthusiasm.

"You two are the best friends a guy could ask for," Phil said, pulling back, "I don't know what i'd do without the two of you."

"We love you too Phil," PJ said, pulling his friend in for a hug.

"Now that we've got all of the sappy stuff out of the way, who's up for a Christmas movie marathon until we pass out?" Chris proposed.

"I can't," PJ said, "I've got a flight to catch around six and I definitely need my sleep if I'm going to be dealing with my family tomorrow."

"I can't either," Phil added, "I've got to give Dan his presents and then catch a cab to my mom's house."

Chris huffed dramatically and slumped down on the couch.

"Well, since you two are going to just  _abandon_ me, and I won't get to see your gorgeous faces again until I get back after New Years, at least help me finish off this bottle of wine before you go. God knows I'll drink it all myself otherwise and I do not need a hangover on Christmas."

"You know i hate drinking," Phil whined, grabbing a glass nevertheless since he knew Chris would talk him into it one way or another.

"Don't get your panties in a wad. It's just a little wine. You can't even taste the alcohol."

Three glasses each later and the bottle was finally empty. Phil felt surprisingly tipsy, and PJ offered to walk him back to his dorm to ensure that he didn't trip over his own feet and knock his head open on a wall or something on his way back. (Honestly it was surprising that he managed not to hurt himself when he's completely sober considering how clumsy he is.)

The two boys said goodbye to Chris and started making their way through the maze of hallways leading to Phil's dorm. When the finally arrived, Phil pulled his friend into a bone crushing hug.

"Thanks for the presents Peej, they were wonderful. I'm gonna miss you these next few days."

"I'll miss you too, dude. But you can call and text me all you want."

They broke apart and Phil walked into his dorm, leaving PJ standing outside.

 _I'm glad you're here, Dan_ PJ thought as he stared at their front door.  _Phil deserves more people that care about him. I'm glad you see him like we do._

And with that, he left to go get some sleep before his flight in the morning.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Dan!" Phil called as soon as he stepped through the door into their shared living space, "Are you awake?"

"Do i ever go to sleep this early?" Dan yelled back from the living room.

Phil laughed, "Good point."

Phil quickly made his way to his room, motioning for Dan to stay put as he passed by. He reached under his bed and quickly pulled out his "Santa" bag that Chris bought him as a joke a few years ago; he had kept it because it was surprisingly good for hiding gifts in.

When he appeared in the living room lugging the giant bag of presents, Dan smiled and quirked an eyebrow at him.

"I'm starting to think you take this Christmas thing a little too seriously."

Phil laughed and rolled his eyes, plopping down on the sofa next to Dan. He reached into the bag and began sifting through it for Dan's presents, placing them in the space between them when he found them. Dan couldn't help but smile when he saw the wrapping paper that decorated all of the gifts.

"Black wrapping paper?" He said, picking up one of the boxes to examine it more closely.

All of the boxes were wrapped in a semi-matte black wrapping paper with a raised mistletoe texture design repeated across the whole surface.

"I was looking for something that was your style yet still Christmas-y enough."

"It's perfect," Dan whispered to himself.

"Well go ahead," Phil said after placing the last box on the sofa between them, "Open them."

Dan picked up a small cube shaped box first. He took a few moments to admire the box. The wrapping was far from perfect and it was pretty obvious that Phil didn't care too much about making all of the edges look neat and precise, but it didn't look like it had been slapped together at the last minute either. There was obvious care taken.

He took the paper off carefully and opened the box to reveal two matte black lip rings with a shiny black gem ball that was just dark enough to look intimidating.

"Woah," he said, examining them more closely.

"I thought you'd like them," Phil said smiling.

Dan carefully returned the rings to their box, making a mental note to clean them and put them in later tonight. He set the gift aside and picked up a bigger box that was more of a thin rectangle. He carefully removed the paper and opened the box to reveal what at first glance looked like a plain black t-shirt, but upon closer inspection he noticed the words "is this black enough for you" in a black font on the front of the shirt.

"Seriously?" He said, smiling as he gestured to the shirt.

"It's funny and you know it."

Dan laughed and put the shirt to the side with the jewelry from earlier. He picked up the last gift that looked extremely thin and carefully unwrapped it to reveal a black card with white and red writing on the front.

**As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed. - Vincent Van Gogh**

The inside of the card was empty save for a small black gift card that said "Vladimir's" on it.

"What's this?" he asked, holding up the card.

"It's a gift card to this book shop in town. It's called Vladimir's and it's huge. It's got every genre you can think of and it has books in French, Italian, Russian, and a bunch of other languages too. I'm not too sure what kind of stuff you like to read, but I'm sure they'll have something there that will interest you."

"This is amazing, Phil. Thank you" Dan said earnestly.

"No problem. It was my pleasure."

Phil made a move to get up, but Dan grabbed his shoulder.

"I, um, I might have gotten you something too."

"Really?" Phil asked, excited.

"Yeah. I'll be back in a second."

Dan quickly made his way to his room and grabbed his sketch book from underneath his pillow where he had been hiding it.

_No backing out now._

He made his way back to the living room where Phil was fidgeting excitedly in his seat on the sofa. Dan smiled at how absolutely adorable the other boy looked and sat back down in his seat, handing the sketchbook over to Phil.

"PJ said you like hand made stuff, so i tried to draw you some things. I'm not very good at it, but..." he trailed off.

Phil was mesmerized when he opened the book. on the first page was a drawing of Buffy staking a vampire; it looked so real that Phil could barely believe that it was a drawing. On the second page was a drawing of Matt Bellamy riding a lion through Tokyo. Phil giggled when he saw it, marveling at how so much amazing had been compressed into a single picture. The next page had ten of his favorite Pokemon on it, each of whom was wearing and asexual flag shirt. The last page was a drawing of a picture that Phil, Chris, and PJ had taken at the beginning of a camping trip they took the summer before freshman year. 

"This is amazing," Phil half whispered as he marveled at the images in front of him.

"Really?" Dan asked, sounding nervous.

Phil nodded, "Completely amazing."

Phil carefully set the notebook down on the coffee table and grabbed Dan, pulling him into a tight hug. Dan froze, not expecting the sudden contact, but Phil didn't seem to notice.

"Thank you so much, Dan."

"D-Don't mention it," Dan said, cursing his sudden stutter, "You're a great guy. You deserved it."

Phil pulled back slightly and, before his brain could register what the rest of his body was doing, he placed a small peck on Dan's lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found the lip rings I described in this chapter online and they are SO hot. Matte black metal is like a thousand times more sexy than it should be.


	14. Chapter 14

Thinking back on it, Phil probably could have handled his momentary lapse of reasoning a lot better than he actually did. He could have apologized or blamed it on the alcohol that he definitely should not have accepted. He probably could have played it off like it didn’t even happen and just move on without having to let anything get awkward, but no. He had to do the stupidest thing possible in such a terribly awkward situation.

Directly after the kiss, although such a light brushing of lips probably barely constitutes as a kiss at all, both boys had stared at each other completely shell shocked for at least a solid four seconds. Dan had opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but before he could Phil had shot up and fled to their bedroom where he hid for half an hour until he heard Dan leave out the front door.

He had left soon after that, calling a cab and then locking himself in his room at his mother’s house.

Despite his best attempts, he didn’t manage to fall asleep that night. Instead, he kept playing the scene from earlier than night over and over and over again in his head, trying to figure out why in the world he had done that.

Phil doesn’t just kiss people. In fact, he had only kissed two people in his entire life before last night. The first was PJ back in ninth grade. Phil was so scared that he would never be able to actually kiss someone if by some miracle he ended up with a relationship because it was too terrifying and he was incredibly awkward, so PJ had offered to kiss him so that if wouldn’t be as scary when he finally started dating someone. It took nearly two hours of Phil pulling back at the last second before he actually managed to put his mouth somewhere.

The second person he kissed was Justin, and that took a lot of pressuring before he managed to actually do it, and he was still unbelievably terrified the next dozen or so times they kissed after that before he finally got used to it and started to enjoy it.

So how did he just kiss Dan without a single thought?

He wanted to blame it on the alcohol, since that would be easier, but he knew that wasn’t it. He might have been a bit tipsy but he was nowhere near drunk enough for something like kissing to suddenly be so easy. Besides, his last escapade with alcohol had left him slightly depressed and far too talkative until the effects wore off. This was definitely different.

“Phil!” his mother called from somewhere downstairs, “Get down here, your grandparents are here!”

Phil groaned. He _really_ didn’t want to go downstairs and deal with all of his extended family for the next few hours, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

 _Maybe everyone will just forget I exist like usual and I can just sneak back up here later._ He thought to himself.

“I’m coming,” he shouted back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Dan,” Julia called down from the top of the stairs, “Do you want to come have breakfast with everyone? I made pancakes.”

“What do you think?” Dan called back sarcastically from his bed.

Julia sighed, expecting this kind of reply. “I’ll put yours in the microwave for when you get hungry.”

Dan didn’t reply, instead opting to stare angrily at the ceiling above his bed. His room was in the basement of the house so that on the rare occasions that he actually stayed there he wouldn’t have to interact with Julia and his two cousins. The ceiling here was plain, just flat and white with no stains or cracks or anything out of the ordinary. At least back in his dorm the ceiling had a texture design to distract him from his thought.

He’s still not entirely sure what happened last night with Phil. Phil had hugged him, which didn’t really matter that much. Hugging is supposed to be a normal thing that people do, and Phil being the literal ray of sunshine he is, he probably hugs people all the time without a second thought.

But then he kissed him. At first he wasn’t even sure that it happened; it had been so quick and soft that he could barely even feel it. He thought that maybe he had imagined it, but the look of utter shock and horror on the other boy’s face made it obvious that it wasn’t just his imagination. It was definitely real.

A heavy silence followed, and Dan figured he should probably say something to defuse the tension. Dan wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to say when he opened his mouth, probably something stupid about how it was fine and he knew that it was an accident and obviously not the other boy’s intention, but he didn’t get the chance to find out. Faster than his shocked brain could process, Phil had shot up off of the couch and hid in their room, slamming the door behind him.

Dan’s not sure what happened after that. The entire situation must have just been too much to process because the next thing he knew he was sitting on his bed at Julia’s house with his gifts from Phil sitting neatly on the dresser across the room.

 _What am I going to do?_ He thought to himself. _He’s going to want to talk about it now. What am I supposed to say? “It’s fine, I didn’t mind.” He’s going to think I liked it. Which I did, but I can’t_ tell _him that. God, why do I always have to fuck everything up? I always have feelings for the wrong people and it always blows up in my face._

He felt something wet under his fingernails, and he looked down to see that he had been scratching at his arms again; it was an old habit from before he found out that blades work a lot better when he feels like this.

“Oh, just fuck everything,” he said as he watched the blood drip down onto the bedsheets.

He’ll need to wash the sheets later before Julia sees the blood or she’ll have a cow, and he really needs to take a shower because he feels gross and his hair is doing that thing again, but right now he can’t be bothered to care about any of that. He just wants to lie here.

“All you ever do is wallow in self-pity Dan,” he whispered to himself, imitating the voice than constantly plagues his nightmares.

“I hate it when you’re right,” he said back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

PJ closed the door to the bathroom and quickly pushed in the lock button on the handle. His phone had been buzzing all day, and he had only just now managed to sneak away from his family long enough to see what all the messages were.

**(4) NEW MESSAGES**

**I made a really big mistake PJ –Phil**

**I still don’t know why I did it –Phil**

**Call me whenever you get the chance –Phil**

**Not to be pushy but it’s nearly dinner and I really need some advice right about now. –Phil**

The last message was from five minutes ago. PJ quickly hit the call button and brought the phone up to his ear. Phil picked up on the second ring.

“Hey Peej,” Phil answered, sounding exhausted.

“Hey Phil. I’m sorry I couldn’t call you earlier, everyone has been swarming me with questions about school and stuff and I just now got away.”

“It’s fine. I know you’re really busy when you’re with your family.”

“So what were all of those texts about?”

There was a pause on the other line. “I kissed Dan last night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone that keeps reading this, and thank you so much for all of the wonderful comments. They literally make my entire day.  
> Also Phil freaking out about kissing people when he was in ninth grade is totally me projecting my old fear of kissing/never being kissed onto my characters. I'm such a great and creative writer, aren't I?


	15. Chapter 15

“He did _what_?” Chris whisper yelled into the phone, trying to keep his voice down so as to not wake anyone in the house.

“He kissed Dan,” PJ repeated himself.

“Phil kissed Dan?”

“Yep.”

“Our Phil? Philip Michael Lester?”

“Yes, our Phil.”

“The same Phil that was so utterly terrified of his first kiss that it took him literally hours to build up the courage to kiss his best friend in the world? That Phil?”

“Yep, that’s the one.” PJ said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Wow,” Chris said, not entirely sure how to process this new information. “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know,” PJ responded, “He did sound pretty worried though. He told me that he ran off after it happened, and he doesn’t know how Dan is going to react in a few days when he gets back in a couple of days.”

“Oh god, that’s not good. What if he hurts him? I swear, if that little shit touched one _hair_ on my little Philly’s head-“

“He’s not going to hurt him Chris,” PJ cut in, “I’ve been hanging out with him a bit for the past month or so; the whole badass front he’s got going on is all talk. Besides, he like Phil a lot. Like, a whole lot. Like, in the ‘I’m pretty sure this boy isn’t heterosexual’ kind of way.”

“Oh. Honestly, I think that might be worse.”

“I know,” PJ said, “So what are we going to do about this?”

“I don’t think _we_ can do anything. If he was gonna be a dick and hurt our tiny sun child then we could beat him up but this is different. They’re gonna have to work through this themselves.”

PJ sighed, “I was worried you were going to say that.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Dan,” Julia called down the staircase leading to the basement.

“What?” Dan’s voice called back, sounding irritated as always.

“Do you want to come up here for dinner?”

“You already know the answer to that. Why do you keep asking?”

Julia sighed but closed the door anyways, giving the boy his privacy. Dan hadn’t actually left his room since he had turned up here on Christmas Eve and Julia was worried about him, but neither of those two things were really out of the ordinary.

“Why do you even put up with him?” a voice asked from behind her.

Julia spun around to see her son Alex was standing behind her.

“Because he’s my nephew and I love him, just like I love you and your sister.”

“It’s not like he loves you, so why should you give a shit about him?”

“Language, Alex. And he does love me, he just doesn’t show it like you and I do.”

“Oh, I see. The freeloader that scared Dad away gets to swear all he wants but I have to watch _my_ language. Maybe I should break into places and steal things like a little criminal like he did so that you’ll let me do whatever I want like you do with him.”

“Alex, you will not speak about your cousin like that! You know what, you’re grounded. Go to your room; and no phone or computer for the rest of the day.” Julia said sternly.

Alex huffed angrily and turned to go to his room.

“You can’t treat that little criminal better than your own kids just because some guy beat him up when he was younger. It’s not fair!” He yelled as he stomped his way up the stair to his room.

Julia sighed. Her kids weren’t happy when Dan moved in with them, and they both tended to throw tantrums like this pretty regularly when he was home. No matter how many times she explained that her divorce wasn’t connected to Dan and that Dan’s situation was more complicated than they were making it out to be, they completely brushed her off. They had been hoping that when Dan turned 18 that they wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore, but his birthday had passed and he was still here with them. If anything, that fact had made all of the little tantrums more frequent.

“They’re right you know,” a quiet voice said from behind her.

Julia spun around to see Dan leaning against the doorframe at the top of the basement stairs. She hadn’t even heard the door opening.

“They aren’t right. They’re just throwing childish little tantrums is all. One day they’ll grow out of this.”

“No, they have a point. I’m just some thug; I’m a thief and a criminal. And I do treat you like shit the same way that I treat everyone else. I’m eighteen now you know, you don’t have to keep putting up with all of this. Tom already left; you should too.”

“I’m not getting rid of you Dan,” She said gently, “I can’t force you to stay with me anymore, but I’m not lying when I say that I love you. You are welcome here all the time, no matter what. One day you’ll figure out that I’m not lying when I say all of that. And I’ve told you a million times that Tom didn’t leave because of you. That wasn’t your fault.”

Dan rolled his eyes, “Sure he didn’t,” he said sarcastically.

“He didn’t” she said sternly.

She checked over her shoulder to make sure the two of them were alone before she continued. “I didn’t want the kids to know why we split so I didn’t tell anyone what happened, but you’re an adult now. Tom was cheating on me with some college girl; she’s only a few years older than you. I broke it off because of that. He didn’t leave because of you; he left because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

Dan’s regular ‘I don’t give a fuck’ facial expression faltered slightly.

“I’m sorry he did that,” Dan said quietly after a few moments of silence.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s over now and I’m much happier without him. Now, since Alex is in his room and Alissa is staying over at a friend’s for the night, would you like to have dinner up here for a change?”

Dan hesitated, but eventually nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoy this! the next chapter shouldn't take as long as this one did. I had a lot going on lately. Also, thank you to everyone that leaves comments on this. I might not respond to most of them, but i love reading everyone's comments. :)


	16. Chapter 16

Phil was pretty terrified of what was going to happen when Dan got back. He figured that there would be lots of yelling; slurs would probably be thrown and maybe even some shoes or vases is he was really so unlucky. He spent most of the remainder of December thinking of various plans for how to avoid Dan altogether for the rest of the year, but he knew none of his ideas were realistic. When January rolled around he’d have to face what he’d done and deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.

Phil had prepped himself for a lot of different reactions from the leather clad teen, but what he didn’t prepare for was Dan’s actual reaction to the whole thing.

When Dan came back to school, he didn’t say a word to Phil. He wasn’t actually ignoring him either; he would give little huffs or grunts whenever he needed the other boy’s attention for something or when he wanted to show that he knew that Phil was in fact in the same space as him, but that was it. Dan didn’t try to talk to Phil and in response, Phil didn’t try to talk to Dan.

At first, Phil was rather content with that arrangement. He wasn’t getting hurt or told off, so the situation was much better than what it could have been. But eventually he started to think that maybe the silence was worse than any yelling. They used to be able to peacefully coexist within the same living space, but now whenever they accidentally bumped into each other when they were entering or leaving rooms or if their hands brushed slightly when they were handing each other the television remote, an awkwardness would envelop them until one of the boys decided to hide out in their bedroom for a few hours.

Phil was admittedly terrified of what would happen if he brought up the elephant in the room, but he figured getting shouted at for a bit and hiding out for a few days would be better than what they were currently dealing with. At least then it would be over with; just like ripping off a band aid.

“Hey Dan,” Phil called from his place on the sofa.

Classes started tomorrow, so if things did go badly after this he would at least be able to spend most of the day avoiding Dan via classes, and he could hide out at Chris or PJ’s dorms for the rest of the time he was waiting for things to cool down. Hopefully.

“Hm?” Dan sounded, popping his head around the corner.

“C-can I talk to you for a minute?” _Real smooth there Phil._

A look eerily similar to fear flashed over Dan’s features before he went back to his neutral expression. He nodded, walking slowly over to sit on the farthest point on the couch from the other boy.

“So,” Phil started, feeling panic beginning to swell in his chest.

_Hurry up and say it. The longer you wait the more you’re going to freak yourself out._

“I’m sorry that I kissed you the other night,” He said quietly. His voice wasn’t cooperating well with him.

“It’s fine,” Dan said, staring intensely at his lap to avoid looking at the boy next to him. “You didn’t mean to; we can just forget it. It never even happened.”

Phil bit his lip, “I’m not entirely sure it was an accident.

_Don’t say that you idiot! He gave you a way out of this, just backtrack and agree with him._

Dan sighed loudly. “Sometimes it’s better to lie to yourself when the truth can’t reap any positive outcomes.” He finally looked up and met the other boy’s deep blue eyes for the first time in days. “There was no kiss. We exchanged gifts, and then we left to go home for the holidays. Nothing else happened.”

Dan’s gaze was determined and commanding, but there was something else behind it. Something similar to desperation almost.

“Right,” Phil conceded, “Nothing happened.”

“Well,” Dan said, clapping his hands together, “Not that that’s settled, I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”

Dan quickly got off the couch and made his way out the door before Phil could change his mind on their agreement to ignore what happened. After the door closed, Phil sighed loudly and fell back to lie on the couch.

 _This is the best option_ he thought to himself. _Things don’t have to be awkward anymore and everything can go back to the way that it used to be before everything got all messed up. No angry yelling, no awkward silences, just slightly friendlier than acquaintance like conversations and interactions. If we just pretend it didn’t happen, then everything is fine._

_So why do I feel disappointed right now?_

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dan picked at the scabs that were covering his pale arms. He had stashed a new razor in his wallet, but he didn’t feel like using it at the moment. Small drops of blood ran off of his arms and soaked into the dirt underneath them. He found that he enjoyed watching as the thick red liquid was absorbed into the already moist earth beneath him; it felt right knowing that the earth was prepared to take in the small traces of his body that were dripping onto it now as it will with his entire being in the future when he finally dies.

 _Pretentious and morbid as always_ Dan thought to himself.

He stopped picking at his arms and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket instead. Lighting on up, he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

“You know you can’t be with him, Dan,” he said to himself, interrupting the peaceful silence that was surrounding him.

“The boy is a fucking ray of sunshine. You’d just break him and you know it.”

But he couldn’t stop thinking about the words he had said to him. A little kiss at night when they were both overly excited is easy enough to brush off; after all, people kiss people out of excitement all the time. The ambiguity of such an action makes it easier to ignore. Words aren’t as simple as that. They have to be thought about, and something as straight forward as stating that the kiss wasn’t an entirely a mistake is nearly impossible to ignore.

“You need to get over this stupid crush of yours Dan. You’re broken. You’re just going to get someone hurt.”

He flicked the butt of his the first cigarette into the river before lighting up a second one.

 _You know you aren’t going to get over it_  he thought to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOHOO another chapter. If the story goes where i want it to, we should be learning some very interesting things about Dan in the next update. Also, the next chapter is probably going to be a lot longer than most of these, so it may take a bit longer for me to get it written and published. It won't be longer than a month though. (Unless something happens but hopefully) anyways, enjoy!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo! There have been some important tag changes! Please don't read if you find those things triggering. (There are references in this chapter but the next chapter will have more detailed instances.)

Phil wasn’t expecting much to happen that night. He planned on eating something extremely unhealthy for dinner, scrolling through tumblr for a couple of hours, and then going to bed. He wasn’t planning on anything significant to happen that night, and he certainly hadn’t planned on waking up to terrified screaming coming from the bed next to his at just after four thirty in the morning.

“Wha-?” Phil said, still half dazed from being awakened so early and unexpectedly.

He looked over to see Dan thrashing around in his bed, clearly still asleep despite his violent movements.

“Dan,” Phil said, jumping out of bed and shaking the other boy’s shoulder to wake him up.

“No!” Dan shrieked, bolting up in his bed.

Dan’s eyes darted around the room wildly like a scared, cornered animal for a few seconds before he realized that he was in their bedroom. Once his brain caught up to the fact that he wasn’t actually in any danger at the moment, he burst into tears.

Phil was momentarily taken aback, but he quickly recovered and took the other boy into his arms, rubbing comforting circles on the other boy’s back.

“It’s okay. You’re okay. It was just a nightmare. You’re safe here. It’s okay,” Phil said on a loop until Dan managed to calm himself down a bit.

“I’m sorry about that,” Dan said in a small voice.

“Don’t apologize; we all get nightmares sometimes.”

Dan nodded and angrily wiped the tears off of his face.

“I’m gonna go smoke,” Dan said, getting up from the bed and grabbing a pack of cigarettes off of the nightstand, “Go back to sleep; you have classes to go to tomorrow.”

He was out the door before Phil could say anything to him. Phil tried to go back to sleep after that, but he couldn’t. He knows that Dan’s a bit of a mess, but he always at least acts like he has everything under control. All of the leather and the piercings make it easy to forget that he’s actually a broken kid that tried to kill himself a just few months ago.

“I want to help you somehow,” Phil whispered into the silence of the room.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dan looked down at his arms in a bit of a trance. There was so much blood that he could barely see his arms at all, and he was slightly worried that he was going to get some of it on his clothes. He felt bad enough as it is, he certainly doesn’t want to deal with someone thinking he just murdered someone because he’s walking out of the woods with blood stains on his clothes.

The words from his dream kept echoing in his head over and over. Even completely destroying both of his arms and inhaling half a pack of cigarettes hadn’t drowned them out in the slightest.

_“You brought this on yourself Danny boy.”_

_“You can scream all you want; I’m the only one that’ll hear you.”_

_“I wouldn’t have to punish you if you wouldn’t fuck everything up all the time.”_

_“You won’t leave me, Dan. I’ll always be here.”_

_“You’re mine, and I can do whatever I want with you.”_

He could feel the tears making their way down his cheeks again, but he didn’t bother to wipe them. He can break down now that he’s alone. He’s the only one allowed to see just how shattered he really is; he’s the only one that won’t use it against him.

When the sun came up he decided that he should probably head back to his room. He scrubbed the dried blood off of his arms in the freezing cold river water and shrugged his leather jacket back on before heading back to his room. He hoped that Phil would be in class by now; he wasn’t ready to build the walls back up yet.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next few night were fine, but when Friday came around, Phil was awoken by Dan’s terrified shrieking once again. He woke him up, calmed him down when the tears started, and then watched him flee the room to go God knows where to “smoke.”

They repeated this process the nest night. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And then before they knew it, it had been two straight weeks of waking up to horrified screams and tears.

“I thought I got past this part,” Dan whispered to himself louder than he intended as Phil whispered words of comfort into his ear.

“Did you have lots of nightmares when you were younger or something?” Phil asked softly as he continued to rub small circles on Dan’s back.

“Not exactly.”

They were silent for a bot after that; Dan’s soft hiccupping as he tried to calm himself down being the only sound going through the room.

“You know,” Phil said, “talking about it might help. Whenever I have nightmares I like to call Chris of Peej and tell them about it. It makes me feel better.”

Dan didn’t reply for a moment, which Phil took as him turning down the offer, but then Dan pulled away and wiped at the tears in his eyes.

“They aren’t nightmares. Not the normal running from monsters kind anyways. They’re, um,” he paused, deciding if he should continue or just stop before he gives away too much.

“They’re memories. Really bad ones. It’s worse than having just a normal nightmare because nightmares aren’t real. But this is. It doesn’t disappear when I wake up.”

Dan pulled his knees up to his chest. He looked small, curling in on himself protectively like that. Phil hated seeing him like this; seeing him look so much different from his usual loud and confident self. He wanted to protect him from whatever bad memories were hurting him like this. He wanted to protect him from them. He wanted to help him somehow.

“You know, talking about it still might help. You don’t have to, but it might make you feel better if you do,” Phil offered.

“I’ve never-“ Dan paused, debating if he should stop himself and just go hide in the woods like usual.

He took a deep breath. “I’ve never told anyone the whole thing. Even the doctors and the police. I answered their questions, but that was it.”

He looked at Phil’s hand that was resting on his knee, it was a comforting display of assurance that he wasn’t sure what to do with.

“I can’t put all of that on you,” he said, only barely audible, “It wouldn’t be fair.”

Things got quiet again, and Dan was about to get up and leave again when Phil broke the delicate silence.

“You know, nothing about life will ever be fair. But when someone offers you help, it’s not wrong to take it. I won’t make you tell me anything, but I’ve thrown all of my baggage on you before; I’d be more than happy to return the favor.”

Dan fidgeted for a bit in internal debate with himself before sighing loudly.

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when i was writing the really big chapter i told all of you about, i realized i could actually break it into two parts, so here's the first part.  
> The next chapter will be out soon, and we'll finally get a look into Dan's past. Yay!  
> Thank you everyone who reads this. Comments make my day.  
> Enjoy the rest of your day lovely people!


	18. Chapter 18

Dan was nearly thirteen when he realized that he wasn’t entirely straight. He had been dating a lovely girl named Katie for about six months when he first started to notice that he was attracted to guys as well. It terrified him at first, but eventually he came to the conclusion that if it was okay to like girls and okay to like boys then surely it must be okay to like both.

Katie disagreed and broke up with him after he came out to her.

“You’re either gay or you’re straight; you can’t be both, Dan.”

He thought about her words a lot. He didn’t understand what the problem was. He liked girls, and he liked boys; it’s not like he had any choice in the matter. But it seemed like no one else thought the same way, and most everyone assumed that his bisexuality was really just a cop out since he didn’t want to be gay.

Not long after his Dan met a cute boy at the movies while he was out with some friends one night. His name was Bryce; he was sixteen, gorgeous, and didn’t try to hide the longing stares he constantly directed at Dan in the slightest.

After seeing each other a few more times via mutual friend groups, Bryce finally asked Dan out on a date. Dan had said yes so quickly that he would have been embarrassed had the older boy not kissed him directly after and sent his head into the cloud with joy. Dan was beyond excited to go on a date with the beautiful boy, but his mother wasn’t very happy to hear about it.

“But he’s so much older than you.”

“Something seems off about him.”

“Don’t you think you should wait a bit before you start dating again? It hasn’t been that long since Katie after all.”

Despite her protests, Dan decided to go on the date anyways. The pair went out to dinner at Olive Garden and then went to the movies where Bryce insisted on making out the entire time instead of actually watching the film. Dan was a bit disappointed that they didn’t get to see the movie since the previews made it look amazing and he wasn’t entirely comfortable with making out since it was only their first date, but he wasn’t sure how to bring up his complaints to the other boy, so he just kept his mild discomfort to himself.

They continued dating for another three months after that, and Bryce always seemed to try to push the boundaries on what Dan was willing to do whenever they were together. Dan knew what was coming, but he silently hoped Bryce would hold off for a while before suggesting something as intimate as sex. Unfortunately, Bryce wasn’t very keen on waiting, and barely three months into their relationship, he asked Dan if he wanted to have sex. Dan tried to tell him that he wasn’t ready yet, and that he was uncomfortable, but Bryce wasn’t having it.

“I’m just not ready yet. Can’t we wait a little bit longer?” Dan had said while Bryce was undoing his belt.

“It’s been _three months_ babe,” Bryce said, continuing to try to undress his boyfriend despite his protests.

“I know, but I’m not ready for this yet.”

“Why the fuck not?” Bryce yelled, startling the younger boy, “Don’t you love me, Dan?”

“Of course I do,” Dan said, putting his hand over his pants button to keep his boyfriend from proceeding forward with stripping him.

“Then what is it?” He yelled, “Oh, I know. You’re fucking straight aren’t you? You just want to look all cool and edgy by having a boyfriend but really you’re just fucking straight.”

“No I’m not.”

“But you are. You were dating that Katie bitch just a few months ago. You’re just stringing me along.”

“That’s not what this is! I love you, I promise.”

“Then why can’t you prove it!”

Dan gave in after that, not knowing how else he could prove that he loved him and he wasn’t just faking everything to seem edgy. It hurt a lot; Bryce didn’t stretch him at all and he was far from being gentle, but afterwards they had cuddled on the couch while Bryce whispered soft “I love you’s” into Dan’s hair. Dan told himself that it was only that bad because it was the first time, and after that things would get better.

They didn’t.

Bryce became more and more controlling as their relationship progressed, as well as more and more aggressive. He had to know where Dan was at all times, and he would scream and throw things whenever Dan asked to hang out with his other friends without him. Anytime Dan would leave for a few days to go to academic competitions for his school, Bryce would “insist” that they spend the days leading up having sex all day. Anytime Dan would try to protest, Bryce would guilt him into things. Eventually he just stopped protesting, no matter how much he hated it or how sore he was afterwards.

Once Dan came home from a competition a day later than expected because the bus they were using broke down, and when he finally arrived at his boyfriend’s house, Bryce was furious. He had screamed until Dan was worried he was going to bust a blood vessel, and then for the first time, he struck Dan right in the face.

He apologized as soon as he did it, but Dan was too shocked to hear him at first. Bryce pulled him into his arms and told him over and over again that he was so sorry and he wouldn’t ever do it again. He refused to let go until Dan assured him that everything was alright. When he got home that night, he tried to forget the whole incident. After all, Bryce loved him; surely he’d never hurt him like that again right?

Not long after that first hit, Bryce moved out of his parents’ house and into his own small apartment so that they could “avoid so many annoying interruptions.” Apparently avoiding interruptions meant that Bryce was free to blow his top as often as he wanted without having to worry about someone else hearing and intervening. It also meant that on the days when Bryce was rougher than usual and Dan tried to scream or help, no one was there to hear his calls.

Dan wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong to make his boyfriend want to hurt him so much. He tried everything to keep him happy, but more often than not he would end up going home with deep purple bruises that he would have to cover up before anyone saw.

One night near the beginning of Dan’s freshman year, Bryce told Dan that he left his laptop at their school and that he needed him to sneak into the school and get it for him.

“Can’t you just get it in the morning?”

“Someone might steal it before I get there or something.”

“Can’t you go get it?”

“No, I can’t. Unlike you I actually have to work for a living to keep this apartment. Can’t you just do this one little thing for me Dan?”

The argument continued like that for about until Dan finally caved and agreed to get the laptop back. The two of them both attended the local public high school, and it wasn’t very hard to get into. The locks were surprisingly basic and it only took him a few minutes to pick the lock with a bobby pin. He made it in easily and managed to get the laptop from where he was told it was, but before he even knew what was happening police were coming into the building.

Apparently the school had motion sensors, and the laptop that Bryce had told him was his was actually the school principal’s.

He wasn’t sure what to tell the police when they questioned him, so he just didn’t say anything. Because he was a good kid with no criminal record and loads of volunteer work, and since he didn’t fight at all with giving back the laptop, the police let him go without any punishments. The school however wasn’t as generous, and Dan was expelled automatically.

His mom grounded him after that, but Bryce would still sneak into his room every day anyways. Any time Dan tried to ask him about the laptop, he would just avoid the question or turn the interrogation around on Dan, and eventually he just stopped asking about it.

About a month later Dan got enrolled in the nearest private school, and his mom let him out of his grounding for handling everything so well. Dan had hoped that when the grounding was over and he was able to see his boyfriend again without Bryce having to worry about other people being around, thing would finally get better between them.

But they didn’t. Things got so much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready to be disappointed? So when i was writing this chapter i was like "This is so fucking long." so instead of making you wait forever for a really long chapter, i cut the chapter in half. again.  
> thanks for reading though, and remember comments are my lifeblood. even the ones that are just ":)" make me so happy. Don't be shy.  
> next update should be soon!  
> also, loonyhope on tumblr has been translating this fic into russian. Here's a link if you wanna look at that.  
> https://ficbook.net/readfic/3703109/9699163  
> Have a wonderful day/night/other!


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter is really heavy and contains a plethora of possibly triggering things. Be safe.

As their relationship continued, Dan stopped hoping for things to get better. Every day his boyfriend would add a new layer to the near endless expanse of bruises that covered the majority of his body, and when he was finished he would hold the younger boy to his chest and tell him that he was sorry and he loved him so much.

Dan believed him too. He believed every “I love you” that passed through the lips of his abuser. And that’s what hurt him the most. He kept asking himself what he must be doing that was so bad that could cause someone who loved him so much to cause him so much pain. When he couldn’t think of an answer, he decided that it must be his existence as a whole that was the problem.

So shortly after he turned 15, Dan tried to kill himself for the first time.

Despite the fact that Dan was truly brilliant in most ways, he didn’t plan his death very well. Maybe it was because he was under so much stress. Maybe it was because he simply didn’t have enough energy left between the constant abuse and the endless lies needed to hide it. Maybe he didn’t actually want to die but he just wanted someone to save him from everything instead. Either way, Dan ending up taking a fistful of prescription pain killers without checking to make sure that his mother wasn’t home to catch him in the act of doing so.

He was rushed to the emergency room, and after having his stomach pumped and spending a week in a psychological rehabilitation center, Dan was sent back home.

To say that Bryce was furious would be an understatement. By the time he was finished screaming about Dan “being such an attention whore, and “abandoning him for an entire week,” Dan was honestly surprised that he didn’t have any broken bones. He had curled up into a ball on the floor and, like every time he visits his boyfriend’s house it seems, he couldn’t stop himself from crying so hard that his face would be a bright tomato red if it wasn’t already littered with blues and purples.

“I want to break up,” he said pitifully when Bryce had calmed down enough for him to be heard.

“No you don’t Dan,” Bryce said like it was a fact that everyone should know, “No one could possibly love you if you didn’t have me.”

Dan didn’t argue with him.

A couple months after he got back from the hospital, there was a big storm. There was so much rain that nearly every road in the city looked like a lake, and the wind was so strong that it was knocking down trees left and right. His mom was out buying groceries when the storm started and, much like dozens of other poor unfortunate people that night, she died in a car crash on the way home.

When he heard the news, Dan shut down for a few weeks. People kept asking him how he was holding up and all of the other questions that you ask a child who’s just lost their parent, but he wouldn’t respond. He just surrounded himself with numbness because he didn’t know what else he could do.

Bryce, of course, wasn’t happy with that. He was beyond pissed at Dan for seemingly ignoring him all the time. He would beat him and fuck him harder than usual to try to elicit some kind of reaction out of the near empty shell of a boy, but there was nothing more than silent tears that were more of a physical response to the pain instead of an emotional one to it.

Without his mother to take care of him, he was put in the custody of his Aunt Julia. Julia was always very kind whenever he saw her at Christmas and Thanksgiving and such, and she was more than happy to take him in. The fact that she was so kind and loving scared him once the numbness from losing his mother wore off.

Dan eventually decided that his mother dying must have been his fault. Bryce loved him immensely and he still felt like he had to hurt Dan near constantly. He was poison, and his mom was gone because she had gotten too close to him; if he let Julia get too close she would either end up hurting him like Bryce or dead like his mother.

So he decided to push her away, and everyone else with her. It wasn’t very hard to be a total asshole to everyone, and even though it hurt to see the hurt on their faces when he told them to fuck off, he knew it was the best choice.

After the grief caused numbness wore off, Bryce continued to beat him like he was nothing more than a human shaped punching bag specifically designed for him to vent his frustrations on. Dan didn’t know what to do. He just wanted to be able to escape everything, even if it was only for a millisecond at a time. So he turned to self-harm to cope.

Slicing through his skin over and over definitely hurt like a bitch, But it was easier to deal with overwhelming physical pain than it was emotional pain. He loved the few seconds of burning pain that the cuts created; they blocked everything else out for a small window of time. And although he didn’t realize it, he loved the control it gave him too. When he cut himself, he was the only one in charge of how much pain was being dealt.

Not long after he started cutting, Julia’s husband left. He knew it was his fault; after all, he was nothing but a giant dick to the poor man in his own home. Of course he would leave. Julia tried to assure him that the divorce wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t believe her. He just hoped that everyone else would be smart enough to leave too before he could do them anymore damage.

After Tom left, Dan started looking into other things to help him cope with the unbearable pain that he associated with merely being forced to exist. It started with cigarettes and beer since they weren’t too hard to find. They were nice, and they were definitely better than nothing, but they certainly weren’t enough to give him the kind of relief that he needed.

He moved on to pot, which really wasn’t as strong as anti-drug lessons in school had made him believe it would be. From there he moved on to ecstasy which was more in the realm of what he was going for. Two weeks before he turned sixteen, he got caught buying from the school’s drug dealer and was expelled immediately.

He tried to convince Julia to let him drop out and just get his GED since he was already smarter than most college graduates anyways, but she refused.

“You need to go to school. Being around kids your age will be good for you.”

“All the kids my age are fucking dumbasses! How is this going to help anything?”

Julia sighed loudly, not wanted to have yet another fight with the young boy.

“Look, here are your choices. Either I enroll you in public school or I send you to rehab. I can’t watch you 24/7 to make sure you aren’t doing drugs, so either you go to school and get babysat by teachers for eight hours a day or you spend the next few weeks in rehab detoxing from all that shit you’ve been umping through your body. Your choice.”

“This is _bullshit!_ ” he exclaimed, but he ended up choosing school anyways.

Things continued as they had been for a few more months, but then Bryce decided to quit his job on the grounds that Dan was the reason he was living in this shitty apartment, so he should be the one paying for it for them. Dan didn’t even try to argue with his flawed logic anymore, he knew if he tried Bryce would still be getting his way but he would end up going home with more bruises that usual that night.

Since he didn’t have a job, and Bryce had forbade him from getting one on the grounds that it would rob them of their time together, Dan decided to go with something that he never would have seen himself doing three years ago. Robbery.

It was pretty simple at first; he would take cell phones and wallets out of people’s pockets when he brushed against them on the sidewalk, and he would grab people’s purses when they weren’t looking. Minus a couple of angry people that would try to call him out on his pickpocketing every now and then, he never got caught.

But Bryce kept demanding more and more money whilst allowing him less and less time to obtain it, so he decided that he would just try to steal all of the computers from his school one night. It worked out pretty well at first; the alarm systems were disabled and all he had to do was carry the computers from the building to his car outside, but after three hours of lugging heave computers all the way from their rooms to his vehicle, the school janitor pulled up and called the cops.

He was expelled immediately and was put in jail for 24 hours before Julia bailed him out.

When he got back to Bryce’s house after returning from his arrest, Bryce was furious. Much more so than he had been expecting, and that’s saying something because he was expecting a lot. AS soon as he came in he tied him down to their bed and alternated between beating and raping him for hours while he screamed about how much of a fuck up the younger boy was. He had blacked out seven times by the time Bryce decided he was through with him, and he was in so much pain the he couldn’t even move to get away when he was finally untied.

“You can’t do anything right, Dan! Why do you always have to fuck _everything_ up?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you are. If you were, you wouldn’t have lost us our only source of income. I wouldn’t have to punish you so much if you wouldn’t fuck up every single simple thing that you do.”

Bryce continued on like that for a while, with Dan apologizing any time he paused for a breath, until eventually he got around to telling Dan how they would make money since he obviously wasn’t capable enough to keep up his robbery thing anymore.

“I don’t have a choice. I’m going to have to start selling you now. But you aren’t going to be worth much with all those fucking scars you’ve covered yourself with. Jesus, Dan, you even make a shitty whore. You can’t be good at anything can you?”

After that, Bryce started selling him to random men every night that he found who knows where. They would tie him up, beat him until he was screaming so much that his voice was gone, and then fuck him like he was nothing more than some glorified blow up doll. There were at least three of them every night, and in between each of them Bryce would make sure he “got his turn” so that Dan wouldn’t forget who it was he belonged to.

Just under a month into this daily torture, Dan decided he couldn’t/t take this anymore. He swallowed enough pills to kill him twice over, and jumped in front of a truck for good measure. He was positive that it would be enough, and he would finally be safe from all of the things that were hurting him, but it seemed like God wanted to fuck with him instead.

He woke up in a hospital a few days later. Julia said that it was a miracle that he survived something like that, but he disagreed. He thought surviving was the furthest thing from a miracle that could happen to him.

After spending a month in the hospital recovering from the injuries caused by the truck, Dan was sent back to the Psychiatric rehab that he was sent to last time for just over two weeks. When he finally got sent home, Julia refused to let him leave the house. The doctors had informed her that they had found signs of rape when they were fixing him up after the truck, and although Dan continuously denied it, she knew that his mysterious boyfriend that he was always spending time with was probably to blame. Also, since his mood seemed to worsen the more time he spent with him, she guessed that he was probably a good source for the poor boys depression too.

She managed to keep him locked up for three days before Dan managed to sneak out. Dan knew that his boyfriend would be furious that he had been gone for so long. He hoped that he would be so angry that he’d kill him when he showed up; he didn’t know what he’d do if he had to keep dealing with all of this for any longer.

As soon as Bryce answered the door, he slammed his skull into the door frame, causing him to pass out. When he came to, he was shackled to a wall in a basement that he had never seen before, and his boyfriend was sitting in a chair, staring at him until he woke up.

He was trapped there for two weeks before the police finally found him. The things that happened during those two weeks were too horrible for him to recount. He’d never be able to say them out loud. The police and the doctors and the therapists kept asking him questions, but he never gave more than simple yes or no answers.

When he was finally allowed to return home again, Julia put him in therapy. It didn’t do much for him, so he turned to other things to stop the horrifying images that plagued his nightmares. At first it was working, or at least it was working in that he was so out of it most of the time that he didn’t have to worry about the fear that plagued his mind, but after being caught with both cocaine and heroin on school property and being expelled from yet another school, Julia sent him away to rehab for a short time.

When he got back, he decided he needed a new image. He might be a broken little boy two seconds from shattering on the inside, but on the outside he would be someone that no one would want to take a chance at screwing over. He got his lip and ears pierced, and bought an all-black wardrobe to go with it. Julia let him, figuring that his new style was a much better method of coping that his substance abuse.

A little while later, after he learned how to drive himself to exhaustion so that his mind couldn’t dream at all, let alone give him horrifying nightmares, Julia decided to send him to boarding school. She said that starting over in a new place would be good for him, and that he really should finish his last year of high school.

And that’s how he ended up here, with Phil, crying his eyes out because he can’t escape the monsters in his memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to post. I've had so many papers to write for college, and with the holidays coming up I've been super busy. (You all know i go hardcore when it comes to Christmas.) Hopefully the next chapter will be up real soon though. My classes end on the 9th, so i should have more free time after finals.


	20. Chapter 20

It was nearly midday when Dan finished telling his story. There were multiple times when he was crying too hard to speak, and Phil would gently rock him and tell him that he was safe now and he could stop if he wanted to. Phil had been crying for the majority of the time too, but he did his best to hold himself together enough for the other boy’s sake.

“I’m so sorry Dan,” Phil said when they had both calmed down a bit. “you didn’t deserve any of that. No one does.”

“It was my fault,” Dan said, uncharacteristically nuzzling into Phil’s neck for comfort, “Realistically I could have stopped all of it from happening but I didn’t. If I was straight, then I never would have gotten stuck with him in the first place. If I was gay then he wouldn’t have been able to guilt me into sex the first time and I would have left him like a normal person. If I had actually died the first time that I tried to then I wouldn’t have had to go through all of this. I could have done so many things but I didn’t. Now I’m fucked up and it’s all my fault.”

“Don’t you dare say that,” Phil said, his tone far more stern than the other boy had been expecting. “We don’t get to choose our sexualities; it’s not your fault that you’re bi the same way it isn’t my fault that I’m ace and it isn’t PJ’s fault that he’s straight. Who or what you’re into shouldn’t matter and anyone who disagrees is wrong.”

He pulled the other boy even closer so that they were all tangled up in a way that they both found comforting, even though Dan would never admit to that.

“And you _definitely_ don’t deserve to die. I know you think that it would make everything stop, and that you won’t be able to hurt anyone and no one will be able to hurt you but you’re wrong. If you’re dead you can’t get hurt, but you also don’t get a chance to ever be happy anymore. All you get is a sad story with a sad ending, like a great show that gets cancelled before it has a chance to really develop.

“And it hurts everyone else too. Everyone that knows you has to spend the rest of their lives thinking about all of the things that they could have done to save you. Even if you weren’t that close, they’ll still think about you in the future and wish that they could have known you better; wish that they could have helped you in some way. I’m so sorry that you went through everything that you did, but I’m glad that you’ve survived. I’m glad that I’ve gotten to meet you and that I have the chance to maybe be your friend.”

The two were quiet after that, and nobody said anything for a few long minutes.

“I’m sorry that I can’t be much help with most thing, but I do know about toxic and unhealthy relationships. You shouldn’t blame yourself for not being what they wanted. If you aren’t hurting anyone then you shouldn’t have to change who you are just to make someone else happy. If you aren’t what they want then that isn’t your fault.”

“I’m really glad that I met you,” Dan said, mostly to himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The pair had fallen asleep after that, both of them drained from the emotionally exhausting conversation. Dan woke up first and, in traditional Dan fashion, he quietly snuck out while the other boy was sleeping.

He isn’t sure how he feels about spilling everything to Phil just yet. On one hand it’s extremely relieving that someone else know the whole story now. There’s an odd sense of comfort in revealing yourself to someone and not having to hold up the weight of all the walls that he put up to separate the real Dan from the façade that everyone sees.

On the other hand, though, that level of vulnerability is terrifying on a near petrifying level. If Dan’s being honest with himself, which admittedly he usually isn’t, he’s got no fucking clue who the real Dan is anymore. His tough guy exterior is so easy and convincing that he isn’t sure which parts are him and which parts are an act. Letting someone else see that, even someone as genuinely gentle and kind as Phil, is terrifying.

He wasn’t sure where he was going when he left, but some part of his brain decided that he must still be in an oversharing mood because he found himself standing in front of his aunt’s front door. He contemplated leaving and just spending the day alone in the woods again, but some larger part of his brain just said “fuck it,” so he knocked on the door.

Julia appeared a few moments later, looking shocked at first upon seeing who was at the door but covering it up quickly.

“Hi Dan,” she said, “Shouldn’t you be at school right now?”

Dan groaned, rolling her eyes, “Really Jules, you should know me better than that by now.”

She rolled her eyes.

“It’s not worth lecturing you right now. Do you want to come in?”

“Depends, are your annoying demon children here?”

“Don’t talk about your cousins like that. And no, they’re at school at the moment.”

That was enough for Dan, so he walked in and flopped down on the sofa in the living room. Julia sat down on the matching chair next to him.

“So why’d you decide to stop by?”

“Not sure. Just kinda ended up here.”

Julia smiled, “You’re a lot like your mom like that. She’d go for a walk whenever she was thinking about something and end up in the strangest places. We went out looking for her once when she’d been gone for most of the day and when we found her she was sitting on top of the water tower for the next town over. “

Dan smiled slightly at that.

“I did something today,” he said after a small pause, “and I’m not sure if it was a good idea or if I’ve seriously fucked up.”

“Oh no, what’d you do Dan?” she said, going into worried mother mode.

He paused again, unsure if he should say anything.

“I might have told my roommate about everything.”

Julia paused. “ _Everything_ everything?”

“Yeah. _Everything_ everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, new chapter! School is over for the semester, so the next chapter should be out quickly. Thanks to all of you for reading this and comment if you'd like. if you don't like commenting that's cool too though. I hope you all have a wonderful day.


	21. Chapter 21

When Phil woke up, Dan was gone. It took him a few seconds to realize this however as the first thing that he noticed upon waking up was that the bed he was on was suddenly lurching sideways.

“What the f-“ he said as he fell face first onto the floor.

“Chris!” Pj said, “I said wake him up, not throw him out of bed!”

“If you’re going to judge my methods then maybe you should have woken him up.”

“Guys,” Phil groaned from where he was still lying in the floor, “Why are you two even here?”

“We didn’t see you in class today and you weren’t answering any of our texts, so we decided to be marvelous friends and come check up on you,” Pj said as he helped his friend up from his place on the ground.

“Isn’t _that_ your bed?” Chris asked, pointing to the bed on the other side of the room.

“Um yeah,” Phil said, trying to quickly think of what he should tell his friends, “I was feeling sick when I woke up this morning so I got some water from the kitchen and then I just crashed on this one since it was closer to the door and all.”

His friends looked at him quizzically.

“You’re lying,” they said in unison.

“No I am not.” Phil said defensively.

“Your voice got higher when you said it,” Pj said.

“And you rub your elbow when you lie, which is really weird by the way.” Chris added.

“I do not do that.”

“You’re also not using contractions,” Pj added.

“That’s not even a thing.”

“Yes it is. I saw it on like Criminal Minds once or something. Definitely a thing.” Chris said.

“Ugh,” Phil groaned exasperated, falling backwards onto the bed.

“Phiiiiil,” Pj said, poking his black haired friend in the side, “Why’d you skip?”

“Reasons,” Phil responded vaguely.

“What _kind_ of reasons?” Chris prompted.

“The reasony kind of reasons.”

Both of his friends rolled their eyes.

“You know, you aren’t usually one for hiding things Philly.” Pj said.

“Peej,” Chris said, adopting a jokingly mother like tone, “I think our little boy has finally hit his rebellious phase.”

“They grow up so fast, don’t they?” PJ replied in an equally joking tone.

“You guys are the worst.”

“You know it,” They replied in unison.

Phil rolled his eyes in response.

“Seriously though, are you okay? Do you need us to help you hide a body or anything?” PJ asked.

“I’m totally fine. And no, I don’t need help hiding any bodies.” He added jokingly.

“Good. And now that that’s settled, do you want to go out to dinner with us? Chris is practically dying for some Mexican food.”

“You don’t understand. I _need_ burritos. They’re what keep my body functioning.”

“I think I’m just gonna stay in tonight, but you two go have fun. But not too much fun, Chris.”

“I get us kicked out of _one_ restaurant and the two of you just can’t let it go.” Chris said.

“There’s a difference between ‘kicked out’ and ‘banned for life.’” Pj pointed out.

“Who’s been banned for life from where?” Dan asked from where he had suddenly appeared in the doorway.

The three other boys turned around to look at the brown haired boy leaning against the doorframe.

“Chris here got the three of us banned from Buena Comida just down the street from the school last year,” PJ said, seemingly not put off by the other boy’s sudden unexpected appearance.

“How did you manage that?”

“There was a small misunderstanding,” Chris answered.

“And by ‘small misunderstanding’ he means he was shoving plates full of chips and salsa down his pants under the table and the waiters thought he was masturbating in the middle of the restaurant.” Phil clarified.

Everyone sans Chris burst out laughing at that.

“Pj dared me to do it, so really it’s his fault that we can’t go there anymore,” Chris said in an effort to defend himself.

“No, you said ‘I bet I can fit all of these chips and salsa down my pants’ and I said ‘I bet you can too, just don’t do it’ and then you started putting plates full of chips and salsa down your pants.”

“But you didn’t try to stop me, so really you are the reason we can’t eat there anymore.”

The par continued to bicker back and forth while Dan and Phil watched and laughed on either side of them. Eventually Chris conceded the argument because he would actually drop dead if he didn’t get some burritos in him immediately, so the pair of them said goodbye to the other boys and left.

“Your friends are pretty hilarious,” Dan said after the door closed.

“They are pretty great,” Phil agreed, “So where did you go earlier?”

“To see Julia. She gave me these,” he said, holding up a small orange pill bottle that he pulled out of his leather jacket, “They’re these insanely strong sleeping pills, borderline horse tranquilizers if I’m being honest. They’ll knock me out so fast I won’t have a chance to have any nightmares.”

“Are those even legal?” Phil asked, thinking that such powerful medication would probably wasn’t very safe.

“Not in the united states, but I’ve put much worse stuff in my body to sleep before; I’ll be fine.”

Phil frowned.

“Don’t worry; Jules wouldn’t give them to me if they were too bad. She’s much better at taking care of me than it seems. And there’s only like five in here anyways, so I couldn’t do myself too much damage if I tried,” He said, shaking the mostly empty pill bottle to emphasize his point.

“Okay,” Phil said in reply. He didn’t really like the idea of Dan taking such strong medication considering what he had told him about his past, but he figures that if Julia seems to think it’s a good call then he shouldn’t argue. After all, she knows Dan better that he does and she’s been dealing with his problems for much longer.

So with that settled, the boys split up. Phil went to the kitchen to make himself dinner, and Dan quickly swallowed a pill to catch up on some much needed sleep that he had been missing out on lately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WooHoo! I actually managed to update before Christmas! I hope you guys like the chapter. Give me a nice little comment if you have the time. They completely make my day.  
> Also, phaniskillingme on tumblr drew fanart of this fic and it has made my whole year pretty much.  
> Merry Christmas everyone! And Happy Holidays to everyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas. :)


	22. Chapter 23

Over the next month or so, thing went well between Dan and Phil. Dan continued to skip his classes more often than not and spend hours alone in the woods behind the school smoking, but whenever he was actually in their shared dorm room, he would do thing with Phil. Although technically “with” might not be the most accurate word for it.

When Phil is scrolling though tumblr quietly on his bed for hours, Dan will sit opposite him on his own bed and read quietly. When Phil is watching a movie, Dan will sit on the opposite end of the sofa and watch with him. When Phil eats dinner in their dorm instead of out with his other friends, Dan will eat his own dinner in the seat right beside him. Sometimes the pair would make small talk if the silence felt too awkward, but otherwise it would seem that the two of them just enjoyed being in the other’s company.

“Hey Dan,” Phil said, looking up from the midterm study guide he had been staring at and trying to work on.

“Yeah?” Dan said, still looking at the book he was reading.

“How good are you at French?”

“I’m fluent,” Dan said, putting his book down and looking at the other boy, “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m an idiot who thought putting off taking French two for three years would be a good idea, and now I’m completely lost,” Phil said, holding up the thick worksheet packet. “I think I can read like two of these sentences.”

Dan chuckled, “You aren’t an idiot, now let me see your paper.”

Phil handed him the study guide and scooted closer to the other boy on the couch so that they could both look at the packet. Dan quickly skimmed over the review pages to see what it was he would need to be teaching the other.

“Okay,” Dan said, gesturing to the packet, “Which parts of this do you already understand?”

“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Phillipe,” Phil recited.

Dan continued to look at him expectantly.

“That’s it,” Phil said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn then,” Dan said, subconsciously moving closer to the other boy, “But luckily for you, I’ve always been an excellent tutor.”

The two boys spent the majority of their free time over the next two weeks preparing Phil for his French midterm. There were a few occasions where Dan insisted on doing Phil’s other homework for him because “if you want to pass French then you need to stay focused and not worry about trivial garbage that you already understand.” By the time the test actually rolled around, Phil had managed to go from understanding practically nothing at all to getting a low C on his test.

“Dan!” Phil said excitedly ad he walked into their dorm that afternoon, “Come look!”

Dan walked in to see Phil proudly holding up his French test with a large red 73 written on the front like he was a proud child showing his parents a macaroni art project.

“You passed,” Dan said, mirroring the shorter boy’s enthusiasm.

“I passed!” Phil practically squealed, “And it’s all thanks to you. Without your tutoring I literally wouldn’t be able to count past five in French.”

Dan blushed slightly at the praise. “You’re the one who did all the work; I just helped you out a bit.”

“Well I hope you plan to keep helping me,” Phil said, “Because there’s no way I’ll be able to pass my finals without you.”

 _Also I really like spending so much time with you and I’m not ready to give that up yet._ Phil thought to himself.

“I’d love to. Honestly, I kind of missed tutoring.”

“Great!” Phil said, “Oh, Chris and Pj are taking me out for a victory dinner to celebrate not failing French. Do you want to come with us?”

Dan looked confused for a moment, “You want me to hang out with your friends? In public?”

 _Nice one Dan. Could you have worded that to make it sound any more offensive, you idiot?_  Dan internally cringed.

“Yeah,” Phil said, seemingly unfazed by the poorly worded question, “You’re the whole reason we even have a reason to celebrate something, and you’re my friend too, so if you’d enjoy being surrounded by the insanity that always comes with Chris and Peej then I’d love for you to come along.”

Dan hesitated, considering the offer.

“Are you sure they’d want that? I’m not the most kind and friendly person you know. I can be very off-putting. Not to mention my appearance usually draws passive aggressive whispers from old people.”

“I’m sure they’d love to have you eat with us,” Phil said sincerely.

Dan looked conflicted, but eventually caved. “Alright, if you’re sure you’d want me there then I’ll come.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dinner went by swimmingly. Chris and PJ had seemed more than happy to have Dan tag along, and despite how he tried not to show it, Dan was having a pretty good time with them. The group hardly noticed as time slipped away, and eventually they were asked to leave because the restaurant was closing for the night.

The group had a nice walk home. Chris and PJ were bickering back and forth about who knows what and Dan and Phil watched and laughed with them. It was a very peaceful and surprisingly warm night, and everything had a vague, abstract feeling of _right_ in the air.

The four of them walked together until they reached Dan and Phil’s dorm room since it was the closest to the back entrance. Chris and Pj gave Phil bone crushing hugs and congratulated him on passing French again. Afterwards Pj pulled Dan into a rather reluctant goodbye hug on Dan’s part. Chris instead held out his fist and Dan gave him a condescending look.

“Fist bump or hug. It’s your choice dude.”

He opted for the fist bump.

The two other boys walked off to find their own respective dorms while Dan and Phil entered their own residence. Phil went off to take a shower after a long day and Dan flopped down on his bed to read. Two paragraphs in, though, a thought suddenly hit him like a freight train.

_I think I finally have friends again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting close to the end of the story now peeps! I hope you're all enjoying this. Comment if you'd like. Seeing what all of you have to say about this really makes my day. Have a nice day my wonderful readers! :)


	23. Chapter 23

Phil, as it turned out, was surprisingly good at French once he got the hang of it. By the time finals were approaching he was actually ahead of the class, and since he like having an excuse to talk and joke with his friend, he let Dan continue teaching him the language far beyond what he needed to learn for his class.

“You know,” Dan said one night, “You’re really good at this. I’m surprised you were doing so bad at the beginning of the semester.”

“It doesn’t make sense unless you’re explaining it to me.” Phil said simply.

Dan blushed slightly at that, but before he could say anything in reply, Phil’s phone began vibrating violently on their coffee table.

“Hello?” Phil said, answering the call.

“Hey,” PJ said from the other end, “Remember how Chris was going to have a party at his parents’ house after finals since they were going on a business trip?”

“Yeah.”

“Well they had a schedule change and they left early, so we’re having it tonight instead. Wanna come?”

Phil looked over to where Dan was sitting next to him; he was scrolling through twitter and trying to avoid looking like he was listening to their conversation creepily. Phil wasn’t really a fan of parties, or anything involving being surrounded by loud, tipsy teens; but Dan seemed to like those kinds of things, and it might be nice to hang out with the other boy outside of the confines of their shared dorm room.

“I’ll think about it,” he replied.

“Cool. And bring your boyfriend if you come.”

Phil blushed but PJ hung up before he could give his usual _he’s not my boyfriend_ retort, which was probably for the best since Dan was sitting right next to him. Since Dan and Phil had been spending the majority of their time together lately, Chris and PJ had decided it was their jobs as Phil’s friends to tease him endlessly about it.

“So,” Phil said, placing his phone back down on the table, “Chris is having a party tonight. Do you want to go?”

“You hate parties,” Dan replied.

“Yeah, but you don’t. And I can just stay with you the whole time, like a tiny leech.”

Dan laughed at the other boy’s strange analogy. He pondered the invite for a moment before deciding.

“If you want to go then sure; I’m always game for anything with free alcohol anyways.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The two of them ended up taking longer than they expected getting ready, and by the time they go to the house the place was already packed. Phil grabbed onto Dan’s sleeve to avoid getting separated and Dan pushed through the crowd of teenagers until they arrived at the kitchen. The counters were covered in various different bottles and cups that everyone was grabbing at will. Dan took a bottle of wine from amongst the various other bottles and took a long drink, not bothering with pouring it into a cup first.

“Do you want any?” Dan offered, holding the bottle out to the other boy.

“No thanks. Me and alcohol don’t mix well.” Phil answered.

Chris walked up to them after that and said hi before quickly being dragged away by someone Phil didn’t recognize. PJ also spotted them, but on his way across the room a cute girl with long brown hair grabbed his arm and pulled him into a nearby closet. He didn’t seem very upset by her interruption.

After a few more minutes Phil began feeling overwhelmed. The music coming from the large living room was extremely loud on its own, and the added yelling coming from anyone who wanted to talk to someone else wasn’t helping the situation. Since they were still standing in the kitchen, people were coming in and out non-stop and most of them would bump into them while trying to pass through.

Dan noticed that Phil’s grip on his sleeve was gradually getting tighter, so he decided they should probably find a quiet place to camp out for a bit. Pulling the black haired boy along with him, they made their way up a couple flights of stairs until they found a room that didn’t have anyone else in it. Phil felt instantly relieved when Dan closed the door, blocking out most of the noise and closing them off from all of the people.

“Sorry about that,” Phil said, sitting down on the bed in the middle of the room.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dan said, taking a seat next to him, “Some people don’t like crowds. It’s not your fault. Besides, I like it better up here anyways.”

Phil smiled a bit at that.

They started talking about a variety of things like they always do while they party continued on beneath them. After a while the conversation slowly fizzled out and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Dan finished what was left of his wine before tossing the bottle across the room into the trach can by the door.

“Nice throw,” Phil commented.

Dan smirked, pretty proud of his accuracy too.

“What are you going to do after we graduate?” Phil said, making conversation again.

“I don’t know,” Dan responded, “I haven’t thought about it.”

“We graduate in like a month; how have you not thought about it yet?”

Dan shrugged, “I didn’t think I’d survive this long, so thinking of the future seemed useless.”

“What are your plans?” He added after a pause.

“I’m not sure,” Phil said, “I should probably go to College, but I don’t know what I want to do. I might just get an apartment and take a year off trying to figure out what I want.”

Dan nodded. “I’ll probably get an apartment too, somewhere nearby so Julia doesn’t worry about me too much. I might get a job so that I have something to do.”

“You know, we could get an apartment together. I mean, we’ve been living together for a while now and we get along well. It could be nice,” Phil said, trying to sound nonchalant about the suggestion.

Dan hesitated before answering.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Phil attempted to not look deflated by the other boy’s response, but apparently he didn’t hide it very well.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to live with you,” Dan said, trying to make the other boy feel better, “It’s just that… I know you’ve had feelings for me for a while, and obviously you know that I have feelings for you too; but I can’t handle a relationship, and I probably won’t ever be able to. And if you’re always with me, you might not be able to get over whatever your feelings are and be with someone else. And I don’t want you to never find someone because of me, so it’s better if you live alone or with someone else.”

“You think too much,” Phil said, “And relationships aren’t that important. You’re my best friend and I am perfectly happy with that.”

“You say that now, but what about later? I don’t want you wasting your life.”

“I won’t be wasting my life. I’m 17, not 40. I have plenty of time to find someone, and if I don’t then that’s fine too. Dating and getting married isn’t the only way to be happy anyways.”

“Sometimes I think you’re way too optimistic about things.” Dan said.

“Sometimes I think you’re way too pessimistic about things. We make a good balance.”

“We do, don’t we,” Dan said mostly to himself.

“Please get an apartment with me?” Phil asked, drawing out the “e” in “please” like a child asking for candy.

“Fine,” Dan agreed, “But only because you’re too adorable to say no to. Seriously, those puppy dog eyes should be illegal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to post this a week ago, but then I decided that I absolutely hated what I wrote and I deleted everything. I didn't like this draft either, but i never like what I post so it's good enough. Only one more chapter after this, are you guys excited? I plan to have it up in the next week but I started my second semester of college on Thursday so depending on how well I handle that it might be a little longer.  
> Also when this story ends I have a new multichapter fic I'm going to be posting on here, so if you like reading kinda angsty teen au's where everyone is American then you can look forward to that.   
> I hope you all have a wonderful day!!


	24. Chapter 24

*Five Years Later*

Dan woke up to his boyfriend rolling on top of him and placing a sleepy kiss on his forehead.

“Good morning to you too,” Dan said, smiling.

Phil smiled and rolled back over to his own side of the bed, grabbing his glasses and putting them on his face. Dan reached over to grab one of his hands, lacing their fingers together. Over the years the pair learned that they Dan loved physical contact, so when they were awake they were usually touching somehow, whether it be hand holding, cuddles, hugs, or sometimes just sitting with their sides touching. Their friends tease them endlessly about it but truly everyone just finds it adorable.

“What time is it?” Dan asks sleepily.

“Seven thirty,” Phil replies.

Dan groans, “Why the fuck are we awake so early? It’s Saturday.”

“Because you’re graduating this afternoon and I don’t want to be late,” Phil said matter-of-factly.

“It’s not an actual graduation you know; we’re just picking up the certificate. It’s going to look exactly like my other degree except it’ll say ‘Master’s’ across the top.”

“You,” Phil said, booping his boyfriend on the nose, “need to learn how to celebrate your accomplishments.”

With that, Phil hopped out of bed and pulled a slightly reluctant Dan with him. The pair sleepily made their way through their home to the kitchen where they began making their breakfast. Since they’ve been together for so long, they’ve developed a system for when they make meals. Phil cooked them their eggs while Dan made them toast and poured their orange juice. They sat down at their table together and ate quietly, enjoying each other’s company without feeling a need to fill the silence.

“By the way,” Phil said as they were putting their dishes away, “We’re having dinner with Julia tonight to celebrate your graduation.”

“Can’t we just watch a movie and eat pizza to celebrate instead?”

“No Mr. Grumpy pants, we can’t” Phil said, pulling Dan into a hug, “You’ve accomplished something amazing so we have to make a big deal about it. If you don’t want to celebrate these things then you’ll have to stop being so amazing, and that’s literally impossible because you’re such an amazing person.”

Dan laughed, “You’ve got such a way with words, Phil,”

“That’s what you love about me,” Phil said, grinning.

“It definitely is,” Dan agreed. “You know, I’m really glad that I met you. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you in it.”

“I’m glad I met you too,” Phil said, “You make me so happy and it feels like home when I’m with you. You’re probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Dan leaned forward so that their foreheads were touching. “I think I want to marry you someday,” he said.

“You should,” Phil said, placing a quick peck on his boyfriend’s lips, “But you should wait a bit. You _have_ only been my boyfriend for nine months now. I’m pretty sure you have to make it through at least a full year before proposing.”

“Nine months _officially_ , but you have to admit we’ve been together for years now.”

“True, but we’re only twenty-three. You’ve at least got to let me finish college first. And you have to plan an amazingly sappy proposal if you want me to say yes.”

“Noted,” Dan replied, “And you’ve changed your major four times now. We’re going to be ninety by the time you stay with something long enough to graduate,” he added jokingly.

“It’ll be worth the wait. Now come on, we have to get dressed.”

Phil took Dan’s hand and pulled him through their apartment back to their bedroom. Dan rolled his eyes but followed along anyways. He’d never admit it out loud, but he was actual pretty proud of getting his Master’s degree; and he was so happy that Phil and Julia wanted to celebrate it.

Back before he met Phil, he had lost all hope of having a future. All of his dreams he had always had about getting a Doctorate in some obscure yet complicated field of study because he was just that smart, meeting the love of his life and getting married, and going to fancy dinners with his family whenever he won prestigious awards for all of the groundbreaking work he would be doing had all been smashed by a series of terrible circumstance that he had been thrust into. He used to think that if he did have a future, it would be nothing but bleak and miserable.

But now he’s twenty-three and completely in love with the most amazing boy that he’s ever met. He’s managed to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology in just two short years, and then a Master’s degree in just two more. He has the most loving aunt in the world who always make sure to tell him how proud she is of how far he’s come. He still has bad days that are coupled with nightmares and bit of nicotine addiction, but despite all of that he’s happy, fulfilled, and loved.

“You’re smiley,” Phil said, throwing a shirt to him to put on.

“I am,” he replied, “and I have every reason to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is finally over! I almost can't believe it's actually finished. I hope you all liked it. If you're feeling a gap in your heart now because this story is over, I've started a new one called The Academy for Gifted Individuals that you can check out if you're into that. Comment if you'd like, it always makes my day to read them, and have a nice day! :)


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